Bird Beak Lab

In this lab we asked the question of "If natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?". My hypothesis for Darwin's first conclusion was that  if individuals who inherited better traits will produce more offspring, then the tweezers beak will be able to easily get food, and get the most chicks. My hypothesis for Darwin's second conclusion was that if populations begin to look more like the winners, then the tweezers bird will have the most chicks. Both hypothesis were correct because the tweezers bird ate the most, because of its ability to be able to grab a lot of food in a short period of time. After the change, my hypothesis was that the other birds wouldn't get as much, because the tweezers bird would eat a lot of the food before other birds could. It wasn't correct, because the binder clip still the same amount of chicks it did before the change. The tweezers bird had eight less chicks (23 before, 15 after), and the scissors bird has four less chicks (13 before, 9 after). The binder clip remained at thirteen. This result was likely caused because the binder clip bird only fed off of rubber bands, so it made the same amount of chicks both times. 

Our data was unexpected because the binder clip bird should have had less chicks in the second round. This probably happened because the binder clip bird mainly fed off of rubber bands, which were easy for the binder clip. Before the change, the binder clip bird had 63 foods total, and 60 of them were rubber bands. After the change, the binder clip bird had 60 foods total, and 58 of them were rubber bands. This made our binder clip bird get the same amount of food in both rounds. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend to make sure rubber bands were evenly spread throughout the pile of food, and cutting the rubber bands into smaller pieces so that the binder clip bird wouldn't be able to grab it as easily. 

This lab was done to demonstrate how evolution works. From this lab I learned how different beaks effect what birds can eat, and how much time it takes, which helps me understand the concept of evolution. The birds with better beaks which were easier to eat with produced a lot more chicks, and so more of the dominant birds became most of the population. Based on my experience from this lab, I can see if other animals will survive in their environment based on their traits.