Redesign of a life cycle figure improves student conceptions of ecology and evolution

Life cycle diagrams communicate the developmental life stages of an organism. Design choices may inadvertently communicate additional information about survivorship rates, genetic variation, and microevolutionary change. In this controlled experiment, we randomly assigned one of three life cycle diagrams to 684 college students. Each figure included identical life stages of a fictitious organism’s development but differed in 1) number of offspring (single or multiple) and 2) layout (cyclical or linear). Each participant could reference the figure when answering questions about organism survival, variation among offspring, and variation between generations. Students scored 21–37% higher on questions about survivorship when the available diagram included multiple offspring. Students scored 19–30% higher on questions about microevolution when the diagram layout was linear. Overall, students who received the figure with a linear layout and multiple offspring earned the highest average score..., , , # Redesign of a life cycle figure improves student conceptions of ecology and evolution

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tb2rbp08t](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.tb2rbp08t)

These data are student responses to an 8-question survey of survivorship, phenotypic variation, and microevolution topics. Each student was randomly assigned one of three life cycle figures: a cyclical layout with single offspring (CS), a cyclical layout with multiple offspring (CM), or a linear layout with multiple offspring (LM). For questions of survivorship and cohort variation, we compared CS to CM (isolating the variable number of offspring). For questions about intergenerational change and microevolution, we compared CM to LM (isolating the layout variable).

## Description of the data and file structure

The first tab in the data file is the raw data. The second tab includes the processed total score on the 6-question assessment. The next 6 tabs are processed responses to each question. The last two tabs are ...