Types of Evolution Mini-Project

Name:
Period:

Introduction:
We have explored many types of evolution and directions of natural selection in
class during this unit. Now is the chance to take your learning into your own hands.
You are a biology student in the future, taking a class trip to a distant planet
teaming with life. Your assignment is to find a species and explain to the teacher
how they have evolved. All the species on the planet have the same evolutionary
processes as the species found on earth. Good luck exploring!
Procedure:
Follow the steps below in order to show how your species evolved.
1. Create/pick a species
You must pick (make-up) a species you will find on the distant planet. You are
required to hand in a picture of the species that you are observing. Be
creative, they can be anything you want, use color. The only catch is that the
organisms in the population must have three (3) distinct allelic differences in
different frequencies (ex. Darwins finches had beaks ranging from small to
medium to large. Medium sized beaks were the most common, the other two
less so). Use the space below to draw members of the species that show each
different allele along with their frequency in the population.
1st allele
Frequency: ______% of total population

2nd allele
Frequency: ______% of total population

3rd allele
Frequency: ______% of total population

2. Now a portion of that species is going to evolve and become reproductively

isolated from the rest of the population. What makes that portion deviate
from the original population? In order to find out you will roll a dice to
randomly select the effect:
1. Founder effect
2. Bottleneck effect
3. Behavioral isolation
4. Geographic isolation

5. Temporal isolation
6. Reroll the die
Write your effect here ________________________________________________.
3. Finally you must tell me the direction in which natural selection is pushing
your organism. We will choose these again randomly using dice rolls:
1. Stabilizing
2. Directional
3. Disruptive
4. Reroll
5. Reroll
6. Reroll
Write your direction here: __________________________________________________
Once you have your direction make a bell curve chart that shows the direction of
evolution. Make sure to include labels so I know what your chart is telling me.

Now that you have an effect you must explain exactly what that effect was (ex. A
volcano caused my cow population to go through the bottleneck effect). Be creative
here as well, think up a story as to what happened to your population, how exactly
did the behaviors differ, or why did time become an issue to prevent the different
alleles from reproducing? Make sure your story has the following pieces:
o
o
o
o
o

Ive explained
Ive explained
Ive described
Ive described
Ive explained
environment

all of my alleles (Behaviors if I have behavioral isolation)

the effect happening to my species
the type of selection taking place
the relevant parts of the environment (food, predators, prey)
how my population, after selection, is best fit for the

Ive gone into detail about the event taking place (change in behaviors if I
have behavioral isolation)
Write the story here: