Breeding Bunnies Lab
Problem: What happens to the frequency of
harmful recessive genes during evolution?
FF or Ff
Background:
F—allele for fur (dominant)
f—allele for no fur (recessive)
Frequency—how often something occurs. Written as a
ff
decimal.
Hypothesis:
Procedure:
1. Make sure you have 50 red beans and 50
white beans in your bag. These are the
alleles for adult rabbits.
2. Label 3 bowls as follows: FF, Ff, ff
3. The rabbits reproduce: pick out 2 beans at a
time (these are the babies), record the beans
in your data table, and put the beans in the
proper cup.
4. Repeat this until every bean is gone from the
bag, recording the data each time. This
represents the 1st generation.
5. The FF and Ff rabbits survive, and go back in
the bag, the ff rabbits die, because they have
no fur. Keep the ff rabbits in the ff bowl (do
not put them back in the bag).
6. Repeat the procedure for 10 generations,
recording the data for the whole experiment.
7. Calculate the frequency of the F allele and
the f allele for each generation.
Data Analysis:
1. Graph the frequencies of the F and f alleles.
2. What happened to the f allele? Did it
completely disappear?
3. Explain what would happen to the rabbit
population if the hairless gene was dominant?
4. What would happen to the frequency of the f
allele if it was not harmful?
5. Did the genes of the rabbit population change
over time? Explain.
6. Explain how this activity shows evolution.
Genera- Number of FF
tion
Individuals
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Number of Number of Number
Ff
ff
of F
Individuals Individuals Alleles
Number
of f
Alleles
Total
Gene
Gene
Number Frequency Frequency
of
of F
of f
Alleles