investigation 1: artificial selection

what does this lab focus on

focuses on the role of differential reproduction in the natural selection, meaning some organisms in a population reproduce more than other and leave more offspring

basic setup — controlled experiment (measuring traits on the same day, same method)

• variation of population

• any trait that you can easily measure (eg leaf colour, height, hairiness) should be traits that exhibit a range

• choose bottom/top 10% of plants with this trait to reproduce

• transfer pollen between the pool, grow 2nd gen of plants, then measure the chosen trait in the 2nd population

results

• direction selection → eg. artificially selected the most purple plants so that the next gen will inherit the purple genes

• create a bar graph to compare the quantity of your trait between these 2 generations. Are they significantly different?

key skills

• graph data

• explain how natural selection acts on phenotypes

• use data to show how a measurable trait is changing in your plant population