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Item An Investigation of Student Understanding and Acceptance of Evolution(North Dakota State University, 2021) Harding, Rachel Leigh SalterEvolution is central to biology education and yet, it is often one of the most misunderstood and controversial topics that biology educators must teach. Research spanning the last four decades has shown that students continue to struggle, even with direct instruction, to understand the process of evolution by natural selection. In my first chapter, I found that students enrolled in non-majors geology course did not increase in their understanding of evolution, even after instruction. This followed similar findings from research occurring over 30 years in the past. Discipline-based education researchers have theorized that students’ persistent difficulties understanding evolution may stem from the conceptual challenges inherent to complex biological systems. To meet the needs of biology instructors, I developed a new teaching tool, a rapid response rubric (3R: Evolution), to provide more opportunities for formative assessment and feedback in large-enrollment courses. I found the 3R: Evolution provided direct and actionable feedback, allowing students to modify their understanding of evolution in large-enrollment courses and exhibit large increases in their knowledge from pre- to post-assessment. However, knowledge of evolution is not the only challenge to biology education: students must also accept evolution. A lack of evolution acceptance can emerge from various social, cultural, and epistemological factors including religiosity and regional impacts, knowledge of the nature of science, openness to experience, and evolution exposure. In this work, I present a path analysis to illuminate the direct causal relationships from these individual factors to evolution acceptance. I found that while religiosity was the largest casual predictor of acceptance, the other chosen factors, including knowledge of evolution, were all significant predictors of evolution acceptance. Even though evolution remains a difficult topic, this work shows that students can increase both their understanding and acceptance of evolution, using new curriculum and increasing exposure to evolution content across their school career.Item Evolution of Intraspecific Genetic Differences Across Heterogeneous Environments and the Potential Impacts on Environmental Restoration(North Dakota State University, 2020) Yoko, Zebadiah GazeGenetic differences evolve between seed sources of widely distributed species that can impact restoration success. Using the herbaceous perennial Geum triflorum (Pursh) as a model species, we examine genetic differences that evolve across a species’ range in both physiology and fitness. G. triflorum occurs across highly differentiated environments consisting of prairie and alvar habitats. Seeds were collected from 22 populations across three eco-geographic regions. Through a common garden experiment in the prairie environment, I first examined differences in physiological traits between source regions and populations. Significant regional differentiation was observed for a majority of traits assessed, with equal or greater trait variation observed at the population scale. Secondly, differences in fitness between source regions were assessed over a period of three years using the ASTER model. Despite being in the home environment, fitness was considerably lower in prairie-sourced plants than alvar sourced plants, both each year and in total.