Breeding Bugs! Natural Selection with Merge EDU
With Breeding Bugs! in Merge Explorer, natural selection becomes more than a concept—it’s an experience your students can see, control, and understand.
Bugs are everywhere—crawling under leaves, buzzing through gardens, and even thriving in the cracks of sidewalks. They’ve been around for millions of years, and one of the reasons they’ve survived so successfully is their incredible ability to adapt. In Merge Explorer’s Breeding Bugs! simulation, students get a hands-on, interactive look at how natural selection shapes bug populations over time.
Survival of the Fittest
In nature, a bug’s life is short, but the competition for survival is fierce. Only those with the right traits—whether it’s a color that helps them hide from predators or a body shape that lets them move more quickly—will live long enough to have offspring. These survivors pass their advantageous traits on to the next generation. Over time, the population changes, becoming better suited to its environment. In Breeding Bugs!, students can watch this process unfold at an accelerated pace, seeing how each generation becomes more adapted for survival.
Hands-On Learning Through Simulation
The simulation gives students the power to control the environment and observe how those changes impact bug populations. They can adjust variables like habitat type and see how traits such as color, size, or pattern affect a bug’s chances of survival. As students run multiple scenarios, they can compare results, make predictions, and understand how environmental pressures drive adaptation.
Connecting to Science Standards
Natural selection and adaptation are key concepts in life science, and they can be challenging for students to grasp when explained only through static diagrams. With Breeding Bugs!, the process becomes dynamic and memorable. Merge Explorer’s standards-aligned activity plans guide students through making hypotheses, recording data, and drawing conclusions—helping them build skills in observation, analysis, and evidence-based reasoning.
👉 Breeding Bugs activity plan
Breeding Bugs is aligned to NGSS, US state and international standards, from 3rd grade through High School. Find all the science standards for Merge EDU here.
From the Screen to the Real World
Understanding how bugs adapt isn’t just about insects—it’s a gateway to understanding the broader principles of adaptation that apply to all living things. Students can connect the patterns they see in the simulation to real-world examples, such as how certain birds’ beaks change shape over time to match available food sources, or how bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics.
With Breeding Bugs! in Merge Explorer, natural selection becomes more than a concept—it’s an experience your students can see, control, and understand. Try it for free today at trymerge.com.
