Summary: The Influence Of Natural Selection

The purpose of this lab was to figure out how natural selection gave some birds advantage in picking up food. According to Darwin, Natural selection was a process in which “tiny variations were selected by virtue of whether or not they helped organism survive” (Wyhe, 2016). In Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos islands, he discovered finches with different beak size that still somewhat resembled one another. Adaptive radiation was used to describe this concept because the finches all came from one common ancestor but developed variation based on the environment and food supply available. Birds that were generalist survived on variety of foods, while specialist “suffered decline under environmental changes” (Colles et al., 2009).
In this experiment, four different birds were studied with different beak sizes to determine if they were generalist or specialist and how they would be effected by the environment if certain foods disappeared. Common items such as scissors, binder clip, spoon, and tweezer were used to represent the different beak
Only one hand was used to pick up the material while the other hand held the cup. Afterward, the number of paperclips in the cup were recorded. Scissors represent Huxley’s sparrow’s beak shape in the experiment. Then, the same scissors were used to pick up and place unpopped popcorn in Styrofoam cup for 20 seconds. The picked up popcorn were also recorded. Next, the scissors were used to pick up and place rubber bands in Styrofoam cup for 20 seconds. The answer was also recorded. Scissors were used to pick up and place lima beans in cup for 20 seconds and the answer was recorded. Lastly, the scissors were used to pick up and place marble in Styrofoam cup and the numbers of marbles picked up were recorded. During the last part of this experiment, the other students in the group helped keep the marbles from rolling off the