Bird Beak Lab Conclusion

Part 1: Analysis

Our claim/hypothesis for the first part of this lab was "individuals with better traits leave more offspring". This statement was supported by our data because the tweezer beak and the chopstick beak picked up the most food the fastest out of all the different types of beaks and therefore, left more offspring. The tweezer and chopstick birds both left 15 offspring while the other birds left a few less. This happened because birds need food to leave offspring, and if a bird can pick up a lot of food, then they can have more offspring. Our second claim/hypothesis was that "populations begin to look more like the winners". Our evidence supported this hypothesis because the tweezer beak bird and the chopstick beak bird will dominate the population more than other birds. This happened because the tweezer and chopstick birds can leave/support the most offspring and their populations would grow to "beat" the other species.

Part 2: Conclusion

         In this lab we asked the question "if natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?". We found that in future generations, birds would evolve to look more like the tweezer beak birds and the chopstick beak birds because of their ability to pick up the most food and leave the most offspring. Our data showed that the tweezer and chopstick beak birds had the highest number of offspring with fifteen each. They had about 21.4% of all the total chicks. The spoon had fourteen chicks, the binder clip had thirteen chicks, and the scissor had thirteen chicks. This data supports our claim because natural selection will cause the beaks of birds to evolve and become like the tweezer and chopstick birds so that they can have better traits.

         While our hypothesis was supported by our data, there could have been errors due to the different types of food and the timing not being perfect. Some of the different types of beaks could pick up different types of food better. For example, if a binder clip can pick up macaroni the best and a tweezer could pick up rubber bands the best, and there were more rubber bands than macaroni, the tweezer would probably pick up the most pieces of food and therefore leave more offspring behind. This would cause the population for the tweezer bird to grow more and essentially start to look like the "winners" and the binder clip birds would start to look like the "losers". The other error of the timing not being perfect could have caused some people to have more time and others to have less time. For instance, one person could have started picking up food earlier and ended later while another person could have started late and ended early. This would cause some people to have more or less time to pick up more food and thus cause more or less offspring than they should really have. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend having the same amount of variation in the different types of food and try to have the timing as exact as possible.

         This lab was done to demonstrate how natural selection plays a role in evolution of a certain species. From this lab I learned that even the slightest change can cause a huge change in the population and the evolution of a species which helps me understand the concept of natural selection affecting evolution and population showing "winners" and "losers". Based on my experience from this lab I could apply this to another situation by knowing how natural selection plays a role in  evolution and teaching other people that evolution isn't actually as complicated as I thought it was.