Natural Selection and Adaptation

Define "mutation"

Is the following statement true or false? Justify your answer in one or two sentences: “Mutations are caused by selective pressure in the environment.”

Is the following statement true or false? Justify your answer in one or two sentences: “The same mutation could be advantageous in some environments but deleterious in others.”

Is the following statement true or false? Justify your answer in one or two sentences: “The appearance of dark-colored volcanic rock caused the mutation for black fur to appear in the rock pocket mouse population.”

Explain how the environment plays a role in changing the frequency of a mutant allele in a population.

As you saw in the film, rock pocket mice evolved to have dark-colored fur in certain habitats. In three to five sentences, explain how this trait increased in frequency in the population. Include the following key terms: “fitness” (or “fit”), “survival” (or “survive”), “selection” (or “selective”), and “evolution” (or “evolve”).

Near the end of the film, Dr. Sean B. Carroll states that “while mutation is random, natural selection is not.” In your own words, explain how this is possible.

Suppose you are studying a recently discovered population of rock pocket mice with dark-colored fur that lives on volcanic rock. You take a DNA sample from a member of this new population and determine the DNA sequence of a gene known to play a role in fur color. The sequence you get is identical to that of the same gene in another rock pocket mouse population with dark-colored fur that lives on a different patch of volcanic rock. Which of the following could explain this observation?

In one or two sentences, summarize the data presented in the graph.

Provide one possible hypothesis that would explain the observed data. Be sure to include the following key words in your answer: “selection” (or “selective”), “fitness” (or “fit”), and “survival” (or “survive”).