Preface

Preface

If you are reading this preface and are a high school student, you are probably enrolled in an Advanced Placement^® Biology class. Taking AP^® Biology is an exciting and rewarding experience because the curriculum is inherently interesting and challenging. Today’s AP^® Biology course not only teaches you about how your cells and body function, but more importantly, it helps you learn how to design experiments and to ask appropriate questions about how science works. In contrast to old-school biology courses that emphasized memorization, AP^® Biology now encourages you to experience biology and learn about the big ideas through many fun, challenging, and enlightening hands-on investigations. Further, AP^® Biology will help you to develop conceptual understanding of the discipline and a grounding in science skills that will prove useful throughout your college career and beyond.

If you are like most AP^® Biology students, you like a challenge and love to learn. You may well find the AP^® Biology curriculum is unlike most classes you have had before. It will require you to think conceptually. It will emphasize how processes work, how they are regulated, and how data is interpreted. You will be asked to apply your knowledge to new and unique situations. Principles of Life, Second Edition, and its companion online and print resources have been developed to help you succeed in your quest to understand biology, to prepare for subsequent courses, and to do well on the AP^® Biology exam.

Principles of Life, Second Edition, emphasizes the mastery of major concepts in biology through active learning, problem solving in realistic scenarios, and understanding rather than memorization. It embodies the modern, innovative, and inquiry-based approach to teaching biology that was described in an important report called Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (funded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and supported by the National Science Foundation, 2011). This report identified five “core concepts for biological literacy” that should be integrated throughout the college biology curriculum. These core concepts center on the themes of:

• evolution,
• the relationship between structure and function,
• information flow, exchange, and storage,
• pathways and transformations of energy and matter, and
• biological systems.

At about the same time that the Vision and Change report published, the College Board was redesigning the Advanced Placement^® Biology course with the same objectives, resulting in the AP^® Biology Curriculum Framework (College Board, 2011). For AP^® Biology, the five core concepts from Vision and Change were restated as the four “Big Ideas”:

In the Second Edition of Principles of Life, the authors have worked to ensure that these Big Ideas are stressed and reinforced throughout the text, problems, media links, and other activities. To help you build bridges between different portions of the course and areas of knowledge, the authors have provided Links throughout the book. Using these Links will help you see, for example, that information learned about molecular or cell biology is connected to topics in evolution, diversity, physiology, and ecology.

In addition to encouraging a focus on core concepts, the AP^® Biology framework directs students to cultivate certain core competencies to become successful scientists. These competencies are expressed as the seven “Science Practices” in the AP^® Biology Curriculum Framework:

There are numerous opportunities for you to practice these skills throughout the Second Edition of Principles of Life. Every chapter contains Apply the Concept exercises that give you practice working with data and help reinforce concepts central to each chapter. These problems tie in with Making Sense of Data: A Statistics Primer (Appendix B), which provides extra support on understanding why and how biologists draw conclusions from biological data, and thus helps you develop quantitative reasoning skills. The authors have also added more online Animated Tutorials and Activities, which include opportunities to use modeling and simulation modules to further reinforce an understanding of concepts. By engaging in these activities, you will learn the importance of biological concepts and analyses for addressing societal issues and challenges. The Second Edition also includes links (as a QR code or a URL) to online videos in the new Media Clips, giving you an opportunity to see and appreciate the relevance and excitement of biology.

Another valuable element of this textbook is that nearly every chapter incorporates Investigation figures that let you see how we know what we know. Each presents a Hypothesis, Method, Results, and Conclusion. Most of the Investigation figures now have an Analyze the Data section that has an extracted subset of data from the published experiment. You are asked to work with these data and to apply basic statistical approaches to understand the results and draw conclusions. Original references and extensive resources are found online for each Investigation. Moreover, the authors have expanded opportunities for you to apply what you’ve learned by using real data and examples, and have better integrated and explained the concepts of statistical analysis of data. Additionally, to help you understand research tools and how those tools are used in biology, Research Tools boxes explain major tools, including laboratory, computational, and field methods. Each chapter begins with an application of a major concept—a story that illustrates a social, medical, scientific, or historical context for the material. Each of these vignettes ends with an open-ended question you can keep in mind as you read and study the rest of the chapter. At the close of the chapter, we return to the question to show how information presented throughout the chapter illuminates the question and helps provide an answer. By pondering these questions as you study, you are learning to think like a scientist. Throughout every chapter, Checkpoints are designed to help you self-evaluate their understanding of the material.

In addition to your textbook, there are numerous resources offered both online and in print by the publisher. Learn more about them by going to highschool.bfwpub.com/pol2e. One companion resource for this text is Strive for a 5: Preparing for the AP^® Biology Exam that accompanies this text, written by John Lepri and I, who are experienced leaders in AP^® Biology. We wrote this guide to give you insight into how best to study for the AP^® Biology exam while developing a rich understanding of biology.

Each chapter in Strive for a 5 begins with a synopsis of the textbook chapter. This synopsis points out which Big Ideas apply to the chapter’s content, and helps you navigate the chapter efficiently to focus on the most important features in the chapter. We frequently reproduce figures from the textbook to reinforce concepts and to test comprehension. In addition, each section of the chapter is briefly reviewed before you are presented with questions. The majority of these questions are conceptual, requiring you to apply your knowledge. Finally, each chapter concludes with one or two questions, written in the style that you’ll encounter on the AP^® Biology exam, that tie content to the seven Science Practices. These questions run the gamut from short and long free response questions to grid-in items. In addition, we’ve developed two full-length, AP®-style exams at the end of the guide and an introduction to the Science Practices begins the guide—making this the ultimate prep tool for the AP^® Biology exam.

I sincerely hope that as a student you will come to love and enjoy learning about biology. Teaching biology has been my passion for over thirty years. Whether it is evolution, cellular biology, ecology, genetics, physiology, or one of the other new emerging fields in biotechnology, I know that you will find some element of this textbook especially fascinating and I hope that in the future you might make it your passion. Have a great year and the best of luck to you in your studies!