Saturday DNA! Virtual Lab: Candy Bar Phylogenetics (Age 10-14)

Phylogenetics is the practice of determining the evolutionary relatedness of organisms. In this field, scientists use both DNA evidence and shared traits to develop evolutionary trees that illustrate shared ancestries and relatedness among species. In this session, you will build evolutionary trees using candy bars. What traits are useful for determining candy relatedness? Will everyone build the same tree? Join us to find out!

In this activity, you will:

• explore how to interpret an evolutionary tree;
• practice selecting characters to make evolutionary trees;
• build an evolutionary tree using candy bars; and
• compare your results with other participants!

Participants need:

White chocolate, M&Ms, Twix, Snickers, 3 Musketeers, Milky Way

OR

Photos of these candies that can be printed from an emailed template.