Recommended Grade Levels: 9th-12th Grade

Description: In this lesson, students will explore how mosquito populations adapt over time and can develop resistance to commonly used control products. Students will look at how mosquito control has changed throughout history and why new tools and technology are essential to combatting pesticide resistance. This lesson includes a lab where students will run a larvicide bioassay using Bti (a soil-based bacteria) and serial dilutions to assess larval resistance.

Florida State Academic Standards:

• SC.912.L.15.13 Describe the conditions required for natural selection, including: overproduction of offspring, inherited variation, and the struggle to survive, which result in differential reproductive success.
• SC. 912.L.15.14 Discuss mechanisms of evolutionary change other than natural selection such as genetic drift and gene flow.
• SC.912.L.16.2 Discuss observed inheritance patterns caused by various modes of inheritance, including dominant, recessive, codominant, sex-linked, polygenic, and multiple alleles.
• SC.912.L.16.10 Evaluate the impact of biotechnology on the individual, society and the environment, including medical and ethical issues.
• SC.912.L.17.16 Discuss the large-scale environmental impacts resulting from human activity, including waste spills, oil spills, runoff, greenhouse gases, ozone depletion, and surface and groundwater pollution.
• SC.912.N.1.1 Define a problem based on a specific body of knowledge, for example: biology, chemistry, physics, and earth/space science.
• SC.912.N.1.6 Describe how scientific inferences are drawn from scientific observations and provide examples from the content being studied.