Biology  by Bradford
support
Free · AP Biology · Unit 7

Natural Selection escape room

The Fogbound Schooner

Your class has boarded a restored research schooner retracing a naturalist's voyage through a remote volcanic archipelago. Overnight, thick fog rolled in, and the captain sealed the navigation cabin until the crew proves it understands how island life changes over time. The charts that will guide you home sit behind five locks. Each lock needs four correct answers, decoded into its combination. Read the islands' evidence, think like an evolutionary biologist, and set sail.

Play it onlineTeacher pack (PDF)
  • 5 locksfour multiple-choice questions at each, 20 in all
  • About 45 minutesfor a team of three or four
  • Online or on papera link to play, or the pack to print
  • ForAP Biology classes
  • Play linkbiologybybradford.com/escape/u7

The five locks

Each lock’s four answers are decoded with its puzzle into a four-digit combination, so one wrong answer keeps it shut. The questions climb from recall to evaluating evidence.
  1. Lock 1 · Recall

    The Deck Hatch

    Dice Easy

    Add the two dice beside your letter. A blank face counts as 0.

  2. Lock 2 · Understand

    The Specimen Drawer

    Bar chart Easy

    Each letter is a bar. Read its height off the scale.

  3. Lock 3 · Apply

    The Captain's Logbook

    Patterns Medium

    The rule might multiply, or alternate between two steps, or the gaps might grow. Find the missing number; your digit is its last digit (47 gives 7).

  4. Lock 4 · Analyse data

    The Island Charts

    Symbol sums Medium

    Work out each symbol's value from the sums, then swap your letters for symbols.

  5. Lock 5 · Evaluate

    The Compass Chest

    Magic square Hard

    Every row, column and diagonal adds up to the same total, but you have to work out what it is first. One square is blank.

Lock 1, as a team sees it

The first four questions and their decoder. The answers, and the reason for each, are in the teacher pack.

  1. What is a heritable trait that increases an organism's fitness in its environment called?

    1. A Adaptation
    2. B Variation
    3. C Acclimatization
    4. D Mutation

  2. What term describes all of the alleles carried by all individuals in a population?

    1. A Genotype
    2. B Gene pool
    3. C Genome
    4. D Allele frequency

  3. Humans breeding dogs over many generations for herding ability is an example of which process?

    1. A Sexual selection
    2. B Natural selection
    3. C Artificial selection
    4. D Genetic modification

  4. Which type of diagram shows hypothesized evolutionary relationships among groups of organisms?

    1. A Pedigree chart
    2. B Cladogram
    3. C Dichotomous key
    4. D Punnett square

Dice

Easy

Add the two dice beside your letter. A blank face counts as 0.

A =+
B =+
C =+
D =+

Running it

  1. Online: send teams the play link. They answer a lock’s four questions, decode the letters and enter the combination; after lock 5 they get a completion code to show you. Nobody needs an account.
  2. On paper: sign in (free) and print the teacher pack: question cards, the five decoders, a guide and the answer key with a reason for every answer.
  3. Your version: Edit a copy from the library to change any question, then play and print it by its own code, or build a room from the topics your class has covered.

More AP Biology escape rooms