Functional Frogs: Using swimming performance as a model to understand natural selection and adaptations

The ‘Functional Frogs’ 5E lesson plan is an outcome of a Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF project integrates research on swimming locomotion in frogs with broader goals of improving science education. The aim of this RET program was to increase scientific literacy in secondary school teachers in Oklahoma so that they can transfer knowledge from academic research experience to the classroom and thus improve their students' understanding of science. In this lesson, we focus primarily on comparing the peak velocity of five species of frogs, guiding students to collect data from videos of frogs swimming. The students then make evidence-based interpretations about the morphological traits that may underlie differences in swimming velocity across species. The five species differ both in morphology and ecology, with some inhabiting the aquatic environment more than others. Therefore, the lesson helps guide students through important steps of the scientific method to achieve a greater understanding of how adaptations arise in nature through examining variation in ecology, morphology, and locomotor performance.

Methods
You will find the four phases of the lesson as Word documents (Engage, Explore, Explain, and Elaborate).

The videos were collected using a high-speed camera and all are in 125 frames per second.

All videos are in MP4 format.

The titles of the videos refer to the date and time the video was recorded, abbreviation of the name of species and ID number.

The species are Anaxyrus americanus (American toad), Scaphiopus hurterii (Huter's spadefoot), Gastrophyrne carolinensis (eastern narrow-mouthed toad), Hyla chrysoscelis (Cope's gray treefrog), and Rana sphenocephala (Southern leopard frog).