Evolution Lab

“Evolution by Natural Selection”

The object of this experiment is to determine how changing the size of the beak of a finch will affect the population as well as the growth rate of the finch’s beak. The reason for the experiment is to evaluate evolution and how it affects the finch’s population, and how natural selection is always present in life. In this experiment I will show that the finch will continue to evolve until its beak has reached the optimal size for sustaining life, when changing the beak size to a much larger size we will see that the finch will have no need for further evolution of its beak and that its population will become much more stable and consistent throughout the years.

The only materials I will need for this experiment are simply just the evolution lab applet. This applet contains all the information needed to be able to manipulate the characteristics of the finch and see the final outcome over a long period of time.

For the first experiment I left all the variables as is and didn’t change anything. This left all the inputs as you see in FIG. 1. I then ran the experiment and examined all the information very carefully, paying special attention to the population and beak size trends. Then I did my second experiment changing the beak size to the maximum allowable size of 30mm. I left all the other variables alone (as seen in FIG. 2) so that I would be able to clearly see how this would affect the bird’s evolution and population characteristics. As you can see in all the attached charts changing just this one characteristic can have a huge impact on the finch and its population. FIG. 1 FIG. 2
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FIG. 3 FIG. 4
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FIG. 5 FIG. 6
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As you can see in the charts above when changing the beak size to 30mm there is no need for any further evolution of the beak. The beak of the finches on both islands has very little change compared to the continuous evolution when the beak begins at a much smaller size of only 10mm. This leads me to believe that 30mm is the optimum size for the finch’s beak for survivability. We can see that this is true by looking at the population charts. In figures 5 and 6. Figure 5 shows that as the beak grows the population continues to raise continuously. While figure 6 shows that when the finch has a large 30mm beak that the birds population immediately flourishes and stays very steady. I believe that my experiment does prove my hypothesis by showing that the finch will continue to evolve until they have reached the point that helps them sustain the best survivability.

In conclusion we can see that the finch will continue to evolve and adapt to its surroundings so that it can continue to flourish and grow on both islands. Without evolution the world would not be what it is today, evolution is what has made us and everything around us so advanced. All life will always continue to advance and better suit its self to its environment. Although evolution is something that happens over a long span of time it is most definitely something that is happening before our eyes constantly, we just have to take the time to go back and conduct our research to be able to prove that evolution has taken place. The strong will always continue to survive and evolve.