bio 101 lab report
Evolution Lab
“Evolution by Natural Selection”
The object of this experiment is to determine how changing the size of the beak of a finch will affect the population as well as the growth rate of the finch’s beak. The reason for the experiment is to evaluate evolution and how it affects the finch’s population, and how natural selection is always present in life. In this experiment I will show that the finch will continue to evolve until its beak has reached the optimal size for sustaining life, when changing the beak size to a much larger size we will see that the finch will have no need for further evolution of its beak and that its population will become much more stable and consistent throughout the years.
The only materials I will need for this experiment are simply just the evolution lab applet. This applet contains all the information needed to be able to manipulate the characteristics of the finch and see the final outcome over a long period of time.
For the first experiment I left all the variables as is and didn’t change anything. This left all the inputs as you see in FIG. 1. I then ran the experiment and examined all the information very carefully, paying special attention to the population and beak size trends. Then I did my second experiment changing the beak size to the maximum allowable size of 30mm. I left all the other variables alone (as seen in FIG. 2) so that I would be able to clearly see how this would affect the bird’s evolution and population characteristics. As you can see in all the attached charts changing just this one characteristic can have a huge impact on the finch and its population. FIG. 1 FIG. 2
FIG. 3 FIG. 4
FIG. 5
“Evolution by Natural Selection”
The object of this experiment is to determine how changing the size of the beak of a finch will affect the population as well as the growth rate of the finch’s beak. The reason for the experiment is to evaluate evolution and how it affects the finch’s population, and how natural selection is always present in life. In this experiment I will show that the finch will continue to evolve until its beak has reached the optimal size for sustaining life, when changing the beak size to a much larger size we will see that the finch will have no need for further evolution of its beak and that its population will become much more stable and consistent throughout the years.
The only materials I will need for this experiment are simply just the evolution lab applet. This applet contains all the information needed to be able to manipulate the characteristics of the finch and see the final outcome over a long period of time.
For the first experiment I left all the variables as is and didn’t change anything. This left all the inputs as you see in FIG. 1. I then ran the experiment and examined all the information very carefully, paying special attention to the population and beak size trends. Then I did my second experiment changing the beak size to the maximum allowable size of 30mm. I left all the other variables alone (as seen in FIG. 2) so that I would be able to clearly see how this would affect the bird’s evolution and population characteristics. As you can see in all the attached charts changing just this one characteristic can have a huge impact on the finch and its population. FIG. 1 FIG. 2
FIG. 3 FIG. 4
FIG. 5