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Practical 8 Natural Selection

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LYDIA BEREHE

The Natural Selection of Bunny Simulation Practical 8, March 2014

Introduction
Background information
Charles Darwin discovered and developed this evolutionary mechanism called natural selection. It basically stated that if there existed variation in population there would be a struggle of survival. Darwin meant that those traits that were the most fit would be passed on to the next generation more often.

Charles Darwin’s experiment was not 100% accurate. His definition of mechanism of evolution was quiet accurate but two major factors were missing.
1. He knew little about the factor causing the variation that he saw in nature
2. He could not explain …show more content…

Based on the color of the brown bunnies, it was easy to adapt and ‘’melt in’’ into the environment, as for the white bunnies it was not, since they ‘’stood out more’’ and became an easy catch for predators.

Experiment 2
In this experiment you will be examining the effect of a dominant mutation that changes how the organism obtains food.

Hypothesis for experiment 2
‘’My beliefs for this experiment is that the dominant mutation will eat all the vegetation there is, which will lead to the recessive ones dying out in lack of food.’’

Data table 2
Graphical Data
Percentage calculations
Generation number
Number of Normal teeth
Number of Long teeth
Total
% Normal Tooth Rabbits
% Long Tooth Rabbits
2

18
0
18
100%
0%
4

120
25
145
82%
18%
7

80
32
112
71%
29%
10

26
108
134
19%
81%

Analysis for experiment 2
Briefly explain how this change in DNA affected the allele frequency of the population. Be sure to use your data in this explanation.
In the table it is shown that the factor of food plays and important role. For the dominant mutation, the ones with long teeth, it takes more than 10 generations to grow stronger. The number shows that the dominant mutation uses up most of the vegetation which leads to less food to the recessive ones.
The change in DNA led to the normal tooth rabbits becoming less frequent in the population. Having long tooth brought the benefit of adapting in the

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