I. Natural Selection: Birds and Worms Lab

II. Introduction a. Background information: here you will need to define natural selection and describe the conditions that have to be in place for natural selection to work. b. Problem: What trait (color) of worm is most favored by natural selection c. Hypothesis:  If there is a population of worms that vary by having the following skin colors: (beige, green and orange) and the worms are in a grassy area the ______color will best avoid detection and will survive. The ______color will be eaten most often.  If there is a population of worms that vary by having the following skin colors: (beige, green and orange) and the worms are in an area without vegetation the ______color will best avoid detection and will survive. The ______color will be eaten most often.

III. Materials and Procedure a. Materials: cup (representing nest), multicolored rotini (representing worms), person (representing bird) b. Procedure: 1. You will need to feed your baby bird in the nest. 2. You and your partner cannot both leave the nest alone (the hawk will eat the young). You will leave the nest and find a worm (noodle) and return it to the nest. You cannot pick up more than one worm at a time. 3. You will have ______minutes to capture as many worms as possible. 4. Count and total the color of the worms captured. 5. Return worms to teacher 6. Repeat steps 1-5 for the area without vegetation

IV. Data Create 2 tables, each one should record total number of worms 3 colors caught in the 2 environments. One is for your individual data. Another is for the class totals.

Graph: Create 2 graphs. One for individual data that compares totals in the 2 areas and one for class data that compares totals in the 2 areas

V. Conclusion here you will need to look at your hypthesis and compare it to the data. Did the data support or refute your hypothesis. What does this say about camouflage? What were some of the errors in this lab? How is this a good model of natural selection and how is it lacking?

VI. Analysis Questions: 1. Suppose that the orange pigment is poisonous to birds. How would you think the outcome would be different if you, as the bird, knew that you needed to avoid that color? 2. Name a case in nature where protective coloration that is not camouflage helps an animal avoid being eaten (much like the scenario in question #1) 3. Natural selection is called survival of the fittest. What kind of worm was not fit in this lab 4. Why was there a time limit placed on the collection of worms? 5. Environmental changes like moving from a grassy area to a dirt area can result in faster acting natural selection. Did you see that occur in our experiment? Why or why not? 6. Name a case in nature where a rapidly shifting environment caused faster acting natural selection to occur. 7. Was there a difference between your individual data and the class data? Why or why not?