Becoming Endemic

Endemic species are species that naturally occur within one specific area or region, and nowhere else. Many times, endemic species have a close relative that lives elsewhere, but sometime in the past they were cut off from one another. Because of this geographic isolation, the endemics become specialized to their local ecology and eventually become what taxonomists consider a distinct species.

Changing climate is one of the major ways that species become isolated. Climate changes cause habitat 'islands' to form, or create ecological barriers, where special, unique species then develop.

Teachers, discuss with your students the concepts of endemism, climate change, and geographic isolation. In this critical thinking exercise, students will discover how endemism happens through playing a modified version of the "Phone Game."

1. Divide your students into four groups.
2. One at a time, take one leader from each group and whisper the sentence "tiger beetles love sandy places" into the student's ear. Do this with each of the four leaders.
3. Each leader will go back and arrange the rest of their group in a circle. They will then whisper the sentence into the ear of the adjacent student, and so forth, until it gets back to the leader.
4. When all groups have gone around once, gather the class together and have the last person within each group to hear the sentence write their sentence on the board. Compare the groups.
5. Ask your students how this relates to endemism. Ask them whether or not they think this exercise was a good analogy for the process of becoming endemic, and why.

(Close Window)