Natural Selection and Evolution
Student Name:
Date:
Gummy Bear Evolution
Gummy Princess Cruise Line has had a catastrophe!? A ship carrying gummy
vacationers is shipwrecked and the defenseless gummies have reached a deserted island. It
is SURVIVOR: GUMMY BEAR! Some of the bears found their way into a meadow,
others in a forest, and some in the ocean. Of course, there are predators everywhere wild,
gummy-eating black snakes in the meadow, vicious gummy-eating badgers in the in the
forest, and deadly gummy-eating sharks in the ocean and you will be one of them! It is
survival of the fittest gummy! Which gummies will survive in each habitat? Which
gummies will have the special characteristic (color) to allow them to elude your endless
attack???
Hypothesis:
Meadow
Ocean
Forest (deciduous)
Materials:
Gummy bears (in different colors), construction sheets that represent the meadow, the
ocean, and the deciduous forest.
Procedure:
Lay out the simulated habitat on the lab table.
Scatter the gummy bears over the habitat (5 of each color). It is hunting season! Each
student from each group will walk up to the table one at a time and quickly grab ONE
gummy bear using ONE hand only! (only 1-2 seconds are allowed to hunt, so grab the
very first gummy that catches your eye!)
Record the number of each different color gummy remaining after the first
hunting season.
Each remaining gummy produces 1 offspring of the same color, which are added to the
habitat.
Repeat hunting and reproduction for two more seasons and record the number of each
color remaining gummies.
Data:
Colors of Gummy bears
Green
Orange
Red
Yellow
Gummies left
after 1st
hunting
season
Gummies left
after 2nd
hunting
season
Gummies left
after 3rd
hunting
season
Habitat
Graph the data for the habitat on the space below:
Questions:
1. Which color gummy bear had the greatest survival rate in your habitat?
2. Why did some of the prey get selected but not others?
3. What is meant by survival of the fittest?
4. Considering that the color of the gummies is a genetic variation within the
gummy species in your habitat, what will the population of the gummies
look like after several more hunting and more reproduction season? Why?
5. How does this la illustrate the idea of natural selection?