evolved: open software for teaching evolutionary biology through virtual inquiries

evolved (EVOLutionary Virtual EDucation) is an open-source R package (R Core Team, 2024) designed for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in evolutionary biology.It provides tools for inquiry-based learning, where students engage in scientific practices to actively build knowledge (Pedaste et al., 2015).The package includes vignettes (tutorials) to facilitate classroom investigations (Tables 1 & 2).However, educators are encouraged to develop their own content modules depending on class context and/or learning objectives.Most of evolved's core functions are oriented towards either (i) developing student intuition for classic models in evolutionary biology using simulations, or (ii) analyzing (parameter estimation, hypothesis testing, visualization) datasets associated with key questions in evolutionary biology (Tables 1 & 2).Importantly, these datasets correspond structurally (e.g., organization and data types) to real datasets used by scientists, and they are compatible with widely-used software for evolutionary analysis (e.g., ape (Paradis & Schliep, 2019)).ammonoidea_fossil Ammonoid fossil occs. Open inquiry Large-scale biodiversity patterns in the fossil recorddeeptime_rocks