This paper analyzes Sim-Evolution, an educational simulator designed to help teachers presenting three basic principles of the theory of evolution by natural selection (TENS): the trait variation within a population, the heritability of trait variation, and the selective survival based on heritable traits. Sim-Evolution focuses on high school students, so its interface was designed to be joyful, helping to engage them. Although it was designed based on the concept of population genetics, knowing it is not a requirement for exploring TENS. Sim-Evolution models the population of a hypothetic bird species in two possible vegetations: forest or veld. Individuals of this bird species vary over two characteristics (color and beak type), with three possible phenotypes for each one. The user can choose individuals to form an initial population and monitor variation through successive generations. Birds breed independently of their phenotype, and natural selection (based on the fitness of each trait) was the only driven factor of population variation. Sim-Evolution was evaluated with high school students during a biology class. Students were able to describe and analyze the simulation process from a scientific perspective, observing the phenomenon associated with TENS. They correctly associated the bird's evolution with different survivor rates associated with the different traits and identified evolution by natural selection as a population and not an individual/organism process. Our proposal opens the possibility that TENS simulator does not obligatorily require users to be familiar with population genetics concepts, which is especially interestingly for high school pedagogical uses.

中文翻译：

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用教育模拟器支持进化论的学习

本文分析了Sim-Evolution，这是一种教育模拟器，旨在帮助教师通过自然选择（TENS）提出进化论的三个基本原理：群体中的性状变异，性状变异的遗传性以及基于遗传性的选择性生存特质。Sim-Evolution专注于高中生，因此其界面设计得很有趣，有助于他们的参与。尽管它是基于群体遗传学的概念设计的，但了解它并不是探索TENS的必要条件。Sim-Evolution模拟了两种可能的植被中假想鸟类的种群：森林或草原。这种鸟类的个体具有两种特征（颜色和喙类型），每种都有三种可能的表型。用户可以选择个体以形成初始种群，并监视连续几代的变化。鸟类的繁殖独立于表型，自然选择（基于每个性状的适用性）是种群变异的唯一驱动因素。在生物课上与高中生一起评估了Sim-Evolution。学生可以从科学的角度描述和分析模拟过程，并观察与TENS相关的现象。他们正确地将鸟类的进化与具有不同特征的不同存活率相关联，并通过自然选择将进化确定为种群而不是个体/生物过程。我们的建议提出了TENS模拟器不必强制要求用户熟悉种群遗传学概念的可能性，