Question

Use what you know about natural selection to fill in the blanks in the hypothesis. It should answer the lab question, “What is the effect of the type of food available on the frequency of different types of bird beaks?”

Hypothesis: If the type of food available changes, then…

…because…

Answer 1

Hypothesis: If the type of food available changes, then the frequency of beak types in the bird population will shift so that beaks best suited to the new food become more common and poorly suited beaks become less common,

because individuals with beaks that allow them to eat the available food will have higher survival and reproductive success and will pass those heritable beak traits to their offspring (natural selection).

Example predictions: more hard seeds → increase in large, thick beaks; more small/soft seeds → increase in small, narrow beaks.