Name ____________________________
Date ____________________________
The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation
Go to the following link. http://media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/films/natural_selection.html
(http://media.hhmi.org/biointeractive/films/natural_selection.html)
Watch the video and answer the following questions
1. Explain the environment where the rock pocket mice usually live in?
2. What happens to the light variety of the mice in the open dessert area?
3. What happens to the light variety of the mice on the lava flow areas of the Valley of Fire?
4. When mice were trapped and examined on the lava flow areas, what color were they basically?
5. What does having a dark coloration do for the rock pocket mice on the lava flows?
6. Does having a light belly have any influence on their survival?
7. What caused the dark variation in the rock pocket mice?
8. When the scientists looked at the DNA of the light and dark variety of rock pocket mice, what did
they find?
9. When the Mc1r gene is turned on, what happens to the color of the mice fur?
10. How does the dark color variation get spread in the dark lava flow areas?
11. If dark color gives mice a 1% competitive advantage, then in 1000 years, what percent will be
dark? ___
12. If the dark color gives them a 10% advantage, it will only take _____ years.
13. What did Rockman find when he examined other lava flows and rock pocket populations?
14. What would Darwin say about why there are more dark rock pocket mice? What theory of
evolution would explain this process?
15. Will the evolution of a species ever stop? _____ Why or Why not?