Quick Quiz
It looks like your students have some questions about Microevolution. Reflect on what you have just learned and see how well you can respond. Just click on their raised hands!
You could respond:
“When we poison pests, the survivors, if there are any, may
be somewhat resistant to our toxins. Their offspring are the parents of following generations, which may become more and
more resistant to our efforts to do them in. Then our poison won’t work anymore.”
You could respond:
“We’ll wait until she sends for you.
”
You could respond:
“No, microevolution can occur in living things of any size.
Microevolution is evolution within a single population. It does not necessarily lead to the evolution of new species, but
may do so in the long run.”
You could respond:
“Humans have been selecting domesticated plants and animals
with preferred traits for thousands of years, resulting in major changes to those organisms. Nature has been doing the same
thing for billions of years, so artificial selection is an interesting miniature model of what has happened in the evolution
of life on Earth.”
You could respond:
“Microevolution can result from mutation, a spontaneous change
in DNA; or migration, genes coming into the population from elsewhere; or genetic drift, random selection for a particular
gene.”
You could respond:
“Humans do all have the same number of genes. When I said “gene frequency,” I meant the number of different sorts of gene variants in a population. So if one year there were more eye color genes coding for green eyes, and the next year there were more eye color genes coding for brown eyes, the gene frequency would have changed.”
You could respond:
“Since larger bodied animals lose heat more slowly, one hypothesis is that larger size was selected for when the sparrows populated the North.”
You could respond:
“Yes, you can change the traits of your guppy population over time. You can select the parents with colors you like and only raise their offspring. This will change the colors of your guppy population.”
