Misconceptions about Natural Selection   Read this before you attempt this assignmentLinks to an external site.

Links to an external site.

WARNING!!!!!!!  **DO NOT Use DOGS or PEACOCKS For your SCENARIO**

Dogs are bred by humans so not a good choice for natural selection and Peacocks are a better choice for sexual selection than natural selection and you are not giving a sexual selection scenario.

Your assignment is to create a scenario that demonstrates the process of natural selection

A scenario is a step by step telling of how this came to be using the STEPS of the natural selection PROCESS.  It can be (and should be!!!) fictitious (fake) but the application of the steps has to be correct.

the steps of natural selection

start with variation in a trait in a population which is the result of a random mutation that has occurred during the process of meiosis. ( ex. the species is a spider and the spider has tentacles that they breath through so they can bury themselves in sand and still breath.  a little spider is born and its tentacle can also function in water but no one knows this yet because it hasn’t needed to work that way yet.

Then there is some change in the environment.   –  ex. SO if it was a dry desert but now it has rained for a century in that area and now it is a lake thats a change in the environment

There are members of the population now with a variety of that specific trait which will help them survive at a greater rate than the members of the population without that variation.  ex. So now all the little spiders who have the weird tentacle that also can breath in water survive and the others have a harder time surviving.

CONCLUSION – Ex. Overtime the water breathing spiders survive and therefore reproduce at a greater rate than the other spiders and so the species seems to have evolved from sand breathers to water breathers.

If these steps are not apparent in your scenario YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE CREDIT.  I am really serious about this.  

Students who rush through this assignment do not do well and do not receive credit – a big part of your grade is showing that you have studied the steps in the natural selection process and are now applying them to your example.

Students who copy an example of natural selection from the internet do not do well on this assignment

REMEMBER your scenario only has to show a logical application of the steps of natural selection. DO NOT RESEARCH A PARTICULAR TRAIT OF A PARTICULAR SPECIES AND COPY WHAT YOU FIND – I guarantee you will not get credit for this type of response because you will not be writing about it in the way the assignment asks you to apply the steps.

Remember Natural Selection is a process.  so your job is to show that you understand the steps in this process by applying the steps to a specific trait for a specific animal or plant do not talk about more than one trait.  For example, don’t write about a lion’s claws and it’s size just choose one feature.

Natural Selection Crash CourseLinkLinks to an external site.

Useful format 

Species = Spiders

Variation = non tentacled vs tentacled a variation that emerged from a random mutation prior to any change in the environment

Change in the environment = desert area is flooded and is now a lake

Effect on species gene pool = Spiders with tentacles survive at a greater rate and thus produce more offspring than the non-tentacled variety.

Outcome= over time it appears that the species has evolved from a non-tentacled species to a tentacled species.