Mechanisms of Evolution

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Reindeer from a rancher in Alaska escape and mate with wild caribou. The offspring have traits for short legs and tame behavior. What is this an example of?

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Gene Flow

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Males of the bighorn sheep species fight one another to show females who is the dominant male and are more likely to mate with females.

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Non-Random Mating

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During a hurricane, a population of beetles almost gets completely wiped out. The only beetles that survived were lucky that they were in their nest at the time of the hurricane and had enough food to survive. Options: Natural selection, Genetic Drift, Gene Flow, Non-Random Mating

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Genetic Drift

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How do insects become resistant to pesticides quickly?

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Natural Selection

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A chemical spill causes a genetic change in the offspring of ladybugs to have blue dots instead of black dots.

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Mutation

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A certain type of plant can produce blue or yellow flowers. During a fire, many yellow flowers are destroyed and now since blue is the dominant trait, the plant reproduces offspring that produce only blue flowers.

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Genetic Drift

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Pattern of natural selection where both extreme versions of a trait are more advantageous than the average, causing a population to evolve in both directions away from the average.

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Disruptive Selection

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This is one of the mechanisms of evolution; it is a continuous process in which organisms with traits that make them better-adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce than organisms without such adaptations.

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Natural selection

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This is a pattern of natural selection where one extreme form of a trait is more advantageous than the average or the opposite extreme; as a result, this trait in the population tends to evolve towards that one extreme.

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Directional selection

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This is the process that ultimately creates new variations and changes in DNA; leads to the creation of new alleles.

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Mutation