Middle School Life Science

Changes to Ecosystems and Populations

Change one thing and the population answers.

Cut the food, cut the oxygen, or add a contaminant, and the brine shrimp population responds within days. Students run the change themselves and argue from their own counts.

Buy the Brainy Briny kit Back to Middle School

MS-LS2-4 NGSS, grades 6 to 8

8.12.A Texas, grade 8

SC.7.L.17.3 Florida, grade 7

How the lab meets it

What students do that satisfies the standard

Grades 6-8

NGSS MS-LS2-4

Standard: Construct an argument supported by empirical evidence that changes to physical or biological components of an ecosystem affect populations.

What the kit does: Each lab changes one component, physical or biological, and students count what happens to the population. Their data is the empirical evidence.

Grade 8

Texas 8.12.A

Standard: Explain how disruptions such as population changes, natural disasters, and human intervention impact the transfer of energy in food webs in ecosystems.

What the kit does: Each lab disrupts the bag on purpose by cutting food, cutting oxygen or adding a contaminant, and students count what happens to the brine shrimp. Honest fit: partial. The kit measures the population change well, but tying that change back to energy moving through a food web takes a class discussion.

Grade 7

Florida SC.7.L.17.3

Standard: Describe and investigate various limiting factors in the local ecosystem and their impact on native populations, including food, shelter, water, space, disease, parasitism, predation, and nesting sites.

What the kit does: Students set the limiting factor themselves, food or oxygen, and investigate its impact on the brine shrimp with their own counts. The other factors on the list, such as disease and predation, come up in discussion.

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