Evolution Lab Report

I investigate the finch’s beak. Beak size is a trait that affects survival. Birds with small beaks are more efficient at utilizing small soft seeds whereas birds with large beaks are better at utilizing large hard seeds. Therefore, when more small seeds available, birds with small beaks would have a higher rate of survival than birds with large beaks. Via versa, when larger seeds available, birds with large beaks would live longer than birds with small beaks.

The experiments I did to see how the beak size and the bird population evolve over 300 years between Darwin Island and Wallace Island by changing some of the inputs suggested in the assignment. Four experiments were done using variance, heritability, beak size traits, and variable precipitation. Wallace Island is the control and Darwin Island is my treatment. The figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 are summaries of the inputs used in the experiments.

Figure 1 Input SummaryFigure 2 Input Summary

Figure 3 input summaryFigure 4 input summary

Figure 1 Result: By increased the beak size to 24 mm, increased the variance of the beak trait to 2.0, and reduced the precipitation to 0 on the Darwin Island to get all 100% hard larger seeds, I expect the Darwin finch’s beak two times larger than the finch’s on beak as on the Wallace Island and should have higher survival rates. Based on the regression lines, the birds’ beak size on the Darwin Island were twice larger then the Wallace Island and were able to adapt to hard larger seeds and increased the population in the rate set the variance trait.

Figure 2 Result: I decreased the beak size to 10 mm and reduced the variance of the trait to 1 as well as increased the precipitation to .82 to have more small soft seeds available on Darwin Island. I expected the birds at Darwin Island to adapt the new environment and increased the population over time. The experiment showed result that the birds with smaller beak size survive at higher rate than...