1. CAMOUFLAGE SCHOOLCAMOUFLAGE SCHOOL Where it’s KILL or be killed… (well, not really)

2. Meet Our Students: I’m Edith! My name is Derek (NOT “Diamond”) I’m Julio, not “stick” “bar” “rod” “line” “pole” or anything else. Julio. That leaves me, T.R. Yes, I’m a trapezoid. I’m Ginger (NOT “Arrow”)

3. Their job as students is… …to get better at camouflaging themselves in numerous backgrounds. They will do their best to hide from you. YOUR JOB AS A PROFESSOR IS… …to give each student a grade (like A+, or F, or B-) in each class they take. Grade them hard or grade them easy, but stay consistent & fair. That’s what you’d expect YOUR school teachers to do. If you spot a student very quickly, then they did a POOR job of camouflaging, and deserve a POOR grade. Get it?

4. How Does this Relate to Ecology??? Camouflage is one of the most often-used adaptations…the advantage it gives to animals can be tremendous. Animals that camouflage poorly will be picked off by predators meaning that their poor genes won’t be passed along…only the best camouflagers will survive & reproduce. In other words, imagine that the students are juicy bugs and you’re a hungry bird. Who will get eaten? We’ll squeeze our students into the six land biomes we did to help review that information

5. Class One: “Basket Weaving”

7. Class Two: “Bamboo”

9. Class Three: “DNA”

11. Class Four: “Good Guys/Bad Guys”

13. Class Five: “Crazy Go Nuts”

15. Class Six: “T.R.F.”

17. Class Seven: “Desert”

19. Class Eight: “Grassland”

21. Class Nine: “Deciduous Forest”

23. Class Ten: “Coniferous Forest”

25. Class Eleven: “Tundra”

27. Graduation: “Under Da Sea!” With all this practice, hopefully the students are up to the task of performing well in their final class and graduating from camouflage school…

29. Will they Pass??? Now, fill out the “FINAL REPORT CARD” and give each student either a letter (C+) or number (78) grade based on their OVERALL performance in their 12 classes. Will everyone pass, or will someone have to take summer camouflage school?

30. What did we learn from this activity? There’s a reason why you hardly ever see perfectly straight lines and angles in nature—they stand out like crazy. Jagged, soft edges work better. Some of you just have better eyesight than others. That’s true for predators, too. If T.R. does a bad job of camouflaging, but an owl who forgot his contact lenses flies by, T.R. just might live to see another day. Grading is no fun.

31. Anything else? As an animal’s camouflage gets closer and closer to “perfect,” environmental changes can throw things WAY off. Consider the Pepper Moth: Notice the two varieties… which likely has a better shot at surviving?

32. It Wasn’t Always Like That… For thousands of years, the pepper moth lived in forests where the trees were covered in LICHEN. Notice that the dark moths really stood out and were very few in number. The white ones blended in with the crusty lichen. Then people started building industrial plants that polluted the air so greatly that the lichen died. All of the sudden, the tree bark was dark and the survival of the two species reversed.

33. So the key is… As an environment changes over time, so must the adaptations that make species “fit” that environment. What’s “best” now probably won’t be the “best” a hundred/ thousand/million years from now. Organisms must change and ADAPT!