Zeinab Elhagehassan

Kassem
4th hour
5-21-13

1) Title: Breeding Bunnies

2) Purpose:
To examine natural selection and see if a trait survives throughout the
generations.

3) Hypothesis:
If the characteristic furless is a recessive trait, then by the end of the 8th
generation, the trait should be extinct.

4) Materials:

50 red beans
50 white beans
1 paper bag
3 dishes or containers
A calculator

5) Procedure:

1. Place 50 red and white beans into the paper bag and shake it up.
2. Select 2 beans at a time and record the data for generation 1. Red is
dominant and white is recessive. Continue drawing pairs outs of the bag
until it is empty. Place each pair in the appropriate dish.

3. FF bunnies have fur, and ff bunnies are furless. The ff bunnies cannot
4.
5.
6.
7.

pass on their gene, so you place them aside before starting your next
generation.
Count the number of the FF alleles and the number of the Ff alleles.
Record this information in the columns labeled: "Number of FF Alleles,"
and "Number of Ff Alleles."
Put the alleles of the surviving bunnies back into the paper bag and mate
them again to get the next generation.
Continue repeating this procedure to get the other generations. Record
the data each time.
Calculate the frequency for the F allele and the f allele for each
generation.

6) Data:
Generation

# of FF
individuals

# of Ff
individuals

# of ff
individuals

# of F # of f
Allel- Alleles
es

Total
# of
Alleles

Gene
Frequency
of F

Gene
Frequency
of f

10

28

12

50

28

78

14

20

50

20

70

17

16

50

16

66

17

14

50

14

64

19

13

50

13

63

19

12

50

12

62

22

50

56

22

50

56

23

50

54

10

23

50

54

50/78=
.64
50/70=
.71
50/66=
.76
50/64=
.78
50/63=
.79
50/62=
.81
50/56=
.89
50/56=
.89
50/54=
.93
50/54=
.93

28/78=
.36
20/70=
.29
16/66=
.24
14/64=
.22
50/63=
.21
12/62=
.19
6/56=
.11
6/56=
.11
4/54=
.07
4/54=
.07

7) Conclusion:
1. My original hypothesis was that if the characteristic furless is a recessive
trait, then by the end of the 8th generation, the trait should be extinct.
2. Based on my lab data, yes, I do need to change my hypothesis. This is
because the furless trait was still around at the 8th generation.
3. The number of alleles for the dominant trait was greater than that of the
recessive allele.
4. The dominant allele's frequency was greater than the recessive allele's
frequency. The dominant frequency continued to increase while the
recessive frequency decreased by each generation.
5. If the furless bunny immigrated to a warmer habitat, then their frequency
may have increased instead of decreased. If we were to repeat this project
using these conditions instead, the furless bunnies would have survived
and there would have been an upsurge in their population. This would also
mean more bunnies and less resources, causing all of them to compete
for food, shelter, et cetera.
6. The results are an example of evolution, or more specifically, natural
selection because the bunnies with the better adaptations have a better
chance at surviving and reproducing. The animals with the not-so-good
adaptations may go extinct.