Lessons · Teaching · life cycles and inherited traits
Cycles, and what is passed on rather than picked up
A life cycle runs from birth through growth and reproduction to death, and some animals change form completely on the way, which is metamorphosis. Offspring inherit traits from parents; other characteristics are acquired during life and are not passed on.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
In beta. This lesson was written for Hone and has not yet been checked by a state certification officer. Practice material, not professional advice. What that means.
What it is for
The inherited-against-acquired line is the one an examination tests and the one that carries a real idea: a weightlifter's child is not born strong. Getting that distinction straight in a ten-year-old is the beginning of understanding inheritance properly later.
How to think about it
For any characteristic, ask whether it arrived with the organism or happened to it. Eye colour arrived; a scar happened. For a life cycle, ask whether the young looks like a small adult or like something else entirely, because that decides whether it is metamorphosis.
Worked example
Complete metamorphosis: egg, larva, pupa, adult, as in a butterflyFour stages, and the larva looks nothing like the adult.
Incomplete: egg, nymph, adult, as in a grasshopperThree stages, and the nymph is a small version of the adult.
Inherited: eye colour, natural hair colour, the shape of a leafArrived with the organism from its parents.
Acquired: a scar, a learned language, muscle built by trainingHappened during the life, and is not passed on.
Your turn
Name the stage between larva and adult in complete metamorphosis.
Egg, larva, , adult
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Calling every change of form metamorphosis. A tadpole becoming a frog and a caterpillar becoming a butterfly both are; a puppy becoming a dog is growth, because nothing was rebuilt.