Table 5 Summary of instructions on the in-class worksheet (Additional file 1) to generate populations seen in Fig. 2

1. Discover population

Establish a population of sticky notes with 2 of each color

2. Founder effect

Some curious sticky notes explore a nearby island and get stuck there

Move a few notes of any color to the island (no more than 3)

Clonal reproduction: For each Note on the island and the mainland, add another of the same color to the same population

3. Gene flow

Periodically, some sticky notes can swim between the mainland and the island

One member of your group will choose up to 5 intrepid sticky notes to move from one population to the other—some can move to the mainland, while others can move to the island

Clonal reproduction

4. Genetic drift

You, the researcher, leave the population, and are gone for several generations

One member of your group will close their eyes and remove 2 Notes from the mainland population and 2 from the island population

Clonal reproduction

Again, the group member closes their eyes and removes 8 Notes from each population

Clonal reproduction

5. Natural selection

Sticky notes have a dreaded flying predator that prefers two of their colors

A group member flies between the island and the mainland, removing 10 notes of these two colors (decide how many to eat from each population)

Clonal reproduction

6. Bottleneck

An event of mass destruction (group choice!) decimates the population

Remove all but 10 notes (decide how to split survivors between populations)

Clonal reproduction