Wednesday, January 4, 2012

CW 48 Answers

1. Natural selection is how the environment can influence the changes in populations over time. Some traits are favorable for survival and reproduction in an environment, so organisms that possess those traits are more likely to survive and pass on those helpful traits to their offspring.

2. Typically, magical pinto and kidney beans survive longer than black beans, lentils and split peas. This is because pinto and kidney beans are usually too large to slip through the holes in the bowl and die.

3. The activity demonstrates natural selection because the environment (the bowl) is choosing for the favorable trait of a large diameter. Magical bean creatures with a large size see their population sizes increase across generations, while the opposite happened to smaller bean creatures.

4. Organisms change and evolve over time to best adapt to changing environments. Changes in climate, weather, predators, food sources, etc. alter what the best trait for an environment is and those organisms with the best traits survive and reproduce. As a result, the population evolves over time.

5. Peppered moths – The color of birch trees darkened which selected for darker color moths and against lighter moths
Antibacterial resistance – The overuse of antibiotics selected against bacteria that lacked the ability to survive in the presence of antibiotics, but selected for those bacteria with the mutations that offered protection from antibiotics

6. Natural selection both requires and produces biodiversity. Without a variety of traits in a population, favorable traits do not exist and so members have an advantage. Natural selection produces diverse populations of organisms each with favorable traits to aid survival and reproduction.

7. One’s traits are controlled by one’s genes, so basically the environment selects for organisms with genes that help survival and reproduction.

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