May 28, 2012

Natural Selection in Beetles






I am modeling the evolutionary process of natural selection on a beetle population. I showed it by before natural selection and after the process was complete. You can see how there was variation in color of beetles before natural selection and after only the brown survived long enough to reproduce. Since the green beetles were eaten more by birds more brown beetles reproduced. After generations only brown traits are passed down, because those are the only ones to survive and become more common. The mode of evolution is selective due to predators. In this case the environment didn’t help the green beetles camouflage, causing them to be eaten and spotted more than the brown beetles were. Eventually the process will go on long enough to only reproduce brown surviving beetles.

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