Michael Ricker Create approach Lesson 1 1) Consider a) Topics already known; Evolution, species, Character displacement, Daphne Major, Variation in beak size, Natural selection. b) Variables; Beak size, Seed size, weather, population c) Relation; Larger beaks means larger seeds, more rain means more seeds and less selective pressure for some. 2) Read a) Define unfamiliar; Mericarp, these are the seeds that some of the birds ate. Granivore species, these are seed eating species, found through dictionary.com. Envisaged, is the act of contemplating future events, also found on dictionary.com 3) Elucidate hypotheses a) How does natural selection play a role in the process of character displacement along with directional selection? 4) Analyze & interpret the data a) Table one illustrates the diet of each finch and what the average seed size was in their diet. b) Fig.2 illustrates the mean beak size over time, allowing for a slight deviation in the numbers for each year’s observations. c) Fig.3 shows the breeding success of two different finches and how they effected the following years population. d) Table 2 shows the difference in the bodies of the finches when looking at 1977 as the base year, and 2004 as the comparative year. 5) Think of the next Experiment It would be interesting to go back to Daphne major and now compare the the different subspecies of finches to one another and see if there is some correlation between their relative body sizes to one another and their survival rate for the following generation.
