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Student

Activity 4.6 Natural selection in action

Purpose

To demonstrate natural selection.

1 Natural selection card sort

Confirm your understanding of the principles of natural
selection by putting the cards describing the adaptation of
head lice to head lice shampoos in the correct order. Then
look at pages 152153 in the AS textbook to check that you
got the order right.

2 Natural selection in the classroom

In this activity a predator (you) is presented with a prey
population with two different phenotypes, one camouflaged
and one which stands out from the habitat background. The
predator is given a fixed length of time to find as many prey
items as they can.

You need

Large piece of patterned paper

50 cut-out pieces of the same patterned
paper
50 cut-out pieces of white paper (of the
same size and weight as the patterned
paper)
Partner to lay out the equipment and
time the activity
Pair of forceps
Stopclock
Beaker

Procedure
1

Lay out the patterned paper, pattern side up; this represents the habitat.

Mix the coloured and uncoloured paper pieces together and put them on the patterned paper. Ensure
that the patterned pieces are pattern side up.

Give the predator 15 seconds to pick up as many pieces of paper as possible using the forceps, and
put them in a beaker.

Count the number of each colour of paper in the beaker and record your results.

Replace the eaten pieces of paper and rearrange the pieces of paper on the background.

Repeat steps 2 to 4 several times.

Comment on your results and answer the questions that follow.

Questions
Q1 How many coloured and uncoloured pieces of paper were picked up and put in the beaker over the
course of the whole experiment (this is your observed value)?
Q2 How many of each colour would you expect if there were no advantage to being camouflaged (this is
your expected value)?
Q3 How could you tell if the difference is statistically significant?

3 Using pastry maggots and birds as predators

Pastry maggots can be made quite easily using a flour, fat and water dough; your teacher/lecturer can give
you a recipe. Design (and you may get a chance to carry out) an experiment to investigate natural selection
using different coloured pastry maggots for garden birds to prey upon. The maggots can either be put
out on coloured backgrounds or directly on grass for birds to be the predators.
While you are planning, be aware of the need for controls, and the need to keep the ratio of maggots of
different colours presented to the birds roughly the same over the course of the investigation.

Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology, Pearson Education Ltd 2008. University of York Science Education Group.
This sheet may have been altered from the original.

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A4.06S

Activity 4.6 Natural selection in action

Student

Head lice cards

The few remaining head lice survive because

they happen to have alleles which make them
resistant to the chemicals.

Head lice and

natural selection

There is a lot of genetic variation in the head

louse population due to the large number of
different alleles.

The survivors get together and breed. They

produce offspring that inherit the alleles that
makes them resistant to the chemical.

Over the centuries many different mutations

have produced different alleles.

Soon virtually all head lice are resistant to the

chemicals.

The alleles for resistance to the chemical

become more common in the population.

Now when people use the shampoo it does not

kill the head lice.

Head lice have become a problem once again.

This is an example of natural selection at work.

Head lice have been infesting peoples heads

for millennia.

Drug companies develop shampoos containing

chemicals which kill the head lice.

For a while, all but a very few head lice get

killed by the chemicals in the shampoo. Head
lice are no longer a problem.

Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology, Pearson Education Ltd 2008. University of York Science Education Group.
This sheet may have been altered from the original.

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A4.06S

Activity 4.6 Natural selection in action

Student

4 Elephant tusks
Tusks are the upper incisor teeth of elephants which have evolved into long tools used for
ripping bark, pushing over trees and defending the herd. Occasionally elephants are born
which grow no tusks or only very small tusks. In protected populations of African elephants
in well managed national parks and reserves, only 12% of elephants have no tusks.
In Zambia's North Luangwa National Park there has been a severe problem with ivory
poaching, and nearly 40% of elephants were found to be tusk-less in the 1990s. A similar
change has occurred in Ugandas Queen Elizabeth National Park and in the Kruger National
Park.
Questions
Q1

Outline the probable sequence of events which led to reduction of tusk size and an increase in
tusk-less elephants in poached populations.

Q2

Explain what is likely to happen to tusk growth in elephant populations when poaching is
controlled.

Q3

Comment on whether elephants are a typical species to show rapid adaptations of this kind.

Frog evolution
In this activity you will use the Newbyte Natural selection: Frogs software to investigate how
predation can lead to evolution by natural selection of a prey species.
1

Load the software and read the information on the help wizard and the background
information from the help button.

Start by using the default settings, where you act as a predator catching frogs from a
population of 30 frogs. Half of the frogs have camouflaged colouration, and the other half
are red.

Work through about 10 generations, then look at the graph by clicking on the graph button
at the top right of the screen. You can print the graph if you wish.

Now investigate what happens when you repeat the experiment with 7% poisonous frogs,
then again when the poisonous allele is linked to the allele for red warning coloration.
Linkage means that the genes are on the same chromosome so are inherited together in
this case it means that the red frogs will mostly be poisonous.
You can add a mimic species, so that you add red frogs that are not poisonous, and see
what effect this has on the population after several generations.

Questions
Q1 a Describe how camouflage, warning coloration and mimicry affect the genetic make up of a
population.
b Explain the effect in each case in terms of natural selection.
Q2 In this software you can only start with a population of 30 frogs. How do you think the results
would differ if the frog population was much bigger to start with?
Q3 Explain why, even if all the red frogs are consumed by predators in one generation, red frogs may
appear in the next generation.

Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology, Pearson Education Ltd 2008. University of York Science Education Group.
This sheet may have been altered from the original.

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