Purpose: In this Virtual Lab you will examine how animals with different mutations survive in specific environmental conditions. You will discover how natural selection changes populations.
Lab Objectives:
Explain the role of mutation in the evolution of species.
Describe how natural selection can change the characteristics of a population
Predict how different environmental conditions might affect a population
HOW TO ACCESS THE LAB
Please right click on the link below and open the lab in a new tab or window.
Evolution Lab http://www.glencoe.com/sites/common_assets/science/virtual_labs/LS06/LS06.html
Provide responses to the following questions IN ADDITION to writing a complete and properly formatted lab report.
1. How can natural selection be modeled?
2. Using information recorded in your results table for Mutations/Conditions combination. Describe how the population of animals changed over time.
3. Using your understanding of natural selection, explain why the population changed the way it did.
4. Invent a new mutation and a new environmental condition that might affect this population of animals. How would the population change over time?
5. The ancestors of giraffes had shorter necks than giraffes today. Make a hypothesis about how giraffes evolved through the process of natural selection.