BRAZILIAN HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS: MAIN CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN EVOLUTION AND BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY ROCHA, Pedro Luís Bernardo*; ROQUE, Nádia*; VANZELA, André Luis Laforga; SOUZA, Ângela Freire Lima; MARQUES, Antonio Carlos; VIANA, Blandina Felipe; KAWASAKI, Clarice Sumi; LEME, Claudia Luizon Dias; FARIA, Deborah; MEYER, Diogo; OMENA, Elianne; OLIVEIRA, Elisabeth Spinelli de; ASSIS, José Geraldo de Aquino; FREGONEZE, Josmara; QUEIROZ, Luciano Paganucci de; CARVALHO, Luiz Marcelo de; NAPOLI, Marcelo; CARDOSO, Márcio Zikán; SILVEIRA, Nusa de Almeida; HORTA, Paulo Antunes; SANO, Paulo Takeo; ZUCOLOTO, Rodrigo Barban; TIDON, Rosana; SILVA, Sueli Almuiña Holmer da; ROSA, Vivian Leyser da & EL-HANI, Charbel Niño* (Biology evaluation team, The National Program for High School Textbooks) Rua Barão de Jeremoabo, s/n – Ondina, Salvador-Bahia, Brazil. ZIP: 40170-115. * Corresponding authors e-mail: peurocha@ufba.br, charbel@ufba.br, nroque@ufba.br Abstract. In 2005, the Brazilian government established a National Evaluation Program in order to evaluate didactic material to be acquired and distributed to 6.9 million students from public high schools. Publishers submitted 20 high school biology books/collections that were analyzed by a team of faculty members from several public universities and high school teachers gathered by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. This process employed a set of criteria and excluded nine of those books/collections. The conceptual problems related to the study of evolution and biological diversity found in excluded materials are presented here. They were grouped into 11 categories, eight of which are very likely to lead to persistent wrong understanding of scientific ideas and difficulties in future learning. Some problems, as that of presenting evolution as a deterministic process, were previously reported in other studies focusing on evolution teaching. Others, such as conflation between organization levels, were not specifically reported but are likely to be widespread. Keywords: Biology textbooks; Brazilian National Program for High School Textbooks; Evolution; Biological diversity; Conceptual problems.