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Juliana Ivanova
Professor Melissa Schafer
Anthropology 1020
24 September 2016
Variation in Environment is Likely to Cause Natural Selection
Introduction: Natural selection refers to Charles Darwins theory explaining the basic
mechanics of evolutionary process. According to the Human Origins text, Darwin realized early
on that biological variation within a species was crucial, and reproducing increase that variation.
He wasnt sure why this was the case, but years later found out from Mathus essay the reason
was the population size always depended on the amount of food and water within the
environment.
Darwin went on a voyage believing in something called fixity of species an idea where
once species were created they didnt change. Once he made it to the Galapagos Islands, he
noticed the variation in beak types didnt follow the definition of fixity of species. He later
discovered these species had come from a mainland and modified over time in response to the
different island habitats and dietary preferences. This discovery went on to be known as
Darwins Finches.
A statistical research article done by Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant from the
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, Unpredictable
Evolution in a 30-Year Study of Darwins Finches studied Darwins finches throughout a 30
year time period. The articles states evolution cannot be predicted due to unknown changes in
environment as changes could fluctuate unpredictably. Two finch beak populations were studied
during this time, the Geospiza fortis and G. scandens. What was discovered was after a 30 year
study, mean body and beak shape were different, however, the body and beak size of G. fortis

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increased, decreased and increased again throughout the years. The G. scandens displayed trends
towards a smaller size and convergence towards G. fortis in morphology. Four years later, the
previous two writers wrote an article titled, Evolution of Character Displacement in Darwins
Finches reviewing the G. fortis and G. magnirostris in their environment during dry and wet
seasons. During the drought in 1977, the finches on the Galapagos Island revealed a scarcity of
small seeds leading the finches towards large and hard seeds called Tribulus seeds which only
large-beaked members of the population could crack. However, these seeds didnt renew during
the drought season and left many finches without food.
From my peer-reviewed academic sources, I hypothesize the smallest beaks (clothes pins)
will decrease in frequency and those with the largest sized beaks (chop sticks) will increase in
frequency as future generations are established. Peter Grant not only has a background in
biology, but he also wrote the two articles four years apart stating what he learned and how he
scientifically tested his assumptions. I believe the research he conducted was all reasonable and
can be used to test a scientific question someone may have related to Darwins Finches.
Materials and Methods: The materials used for this natural selection experiment were:
binder clips, chop sticks, clothes pins, hair clips, tongs, chip clips, bird seeds, and a cup to
improvise for the birds mouth/stomach. During the activity you were given one minute to
gathering as many seeds as possible. The seeds were placed on tables spread out throughout the
whole room, this was your environment and if you had happened to run out of seeds in your area
before the time increment was up you were free to roam into over territories, however, the trick
was you needed to pick up one seed at a time. Once time had been called, you counted up your
seeds and were either eliminated for having too little seeds, or if you supplied enough, you
acquired an offspring. Even though some of the beaks had offspring, the environment didnt
expand and the total beaks in each generation was 23. The three people with the lowest amount

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of bird seeds turned their beaks in and became the offspring of the three people with the highest
amount of bird seeds. For example, if you had a chip clip, clothes pin and chopstick that did the
worst and tongs, hair clips and binder clips performed the best, the chip clip is now a tong, the
clothes pin is now a hair clip and the chopstick is now a binder clip. This was the completion of a
single generation out of the five tested.
Results:

Beak Frequency Through Generations

10
9
8
7
6
5 Clips
BeaksBinder
4

Chop Sticks

Clothes Pin

Hair Clips

Tongs

Chip Clip

3
2
1
0
Start

R1

R2

R3

R4

R5

Generations

Binder Clips
Chop Sticks

Start
5
5

R1
5
6

R2
6
4

R3
5
3

R4
5
3

R5
3
3

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Clothes Pins
Hair Clips
Tongs
Chip Clips
Total:

5
5
5
23

2
7
3
23

1
8
4
1
23

0
9
5
1
23

0
8
6
1
23

0
10
6
1
23

In order of smallest to largest beak size: clothes pins, binder clips, chip clips,
hair clips, tongs and chop sticks, clothes pins started to gradually lose their beaks and by the
third generation they were completely extinct. Binder clips had a fairly steady rate throughout

each generation until the fifth. Chip clips were discovered during the second generation and
remained the same through the end. Hair clips were the winners, having the highest frequency of
beaks each generation. Tong beaks had a steady fluctuation from start to end. Lastly, chop sticks
started well off and slowly decreased as each generation passed.
Conclusion: My hypothesis partially didnt support the articles or the experiment. I did
make an educated guess about the smallest beak size (clothes pins) decreasing in frequency and
that is exactly what happened, on the other hand, the largest beak size (chop sticks) did not
increase in frequency by the fifth generation. In the case of the articles, the finches with the
smallest beak sizes would struggle to find food due to larger beak species; this came out to be
true. In the in-class activity, those with clothes pins had less of a chance of survival due to
natural selection, since other varieties of beak sizes have a greater chance of capturing more food
leaving the clothes pins at a scarcity.
Possibly errors to include are beak width and shape play a great factor in the amount of
food finches can catch, unfortunately that wasnt a part of the research. Food scarcity can
drastically impact the results. A constant drought or a period of wet weather. Inaccurate research
due to limits in technology in the past years.
I believe having others experimenting give you an advantage towards a better
understanding as to why natural selection occurs. A student like myself doesnt have much of an

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education in biological variation, however someone in that field of study would have greater
knowledge. I believe Grant had lots of questions in 2002 when he wrote his first article, however
by 2006 with modern technology and even more information on Darwins theory of natural
selection Grant understood how the population depended on food and water to stay alive.
Discussion: The scientific method deals with gaining information in order to explain a
natural phenomenon. The first step with this is to formulate a hypothesisan educated guess as

to what you believe will come out of the experiment. Hypothesiss are either testable or
falsifiable. The second step is to test and/or collect data for your experiment and analyze what
this data actually means. The third step is to check your results and see if your concluded
experiment supports your hypothesis. Lastly, you can retest and repeat the data until it becomes a
theory. Many fields use the scientific method, physics, chemistry, biology, even outside of the
scientific field. For example, if you are researching how much money you should spend
producing phones, youll need to estimate a dollar amount and see if its reasonable by the end of
the experiment.
The activity on natural selection went through each step of the scientific method. It was a
fun hands-on activity that demonstrated a real-life scenario. The articles incorporated into this
assignment are real studies done and give you a subject to compare the activity to.
Natural selection and its underlying assumptions first state natural biological variation
can be favorable, unfavorable, or neutral. In this case finches with a larger beak size were
favored a lot more and went up in frequency. Second, inheritance of a beak type is passed on
from a parent. Third, competition, because more birds are born than can survive. Lastly,
individuals with favorable variations are more likely to survive and leave more offspring.
Individuals with hair clip beaks survived and had more offspring.
Evolution by natural selection states overtime, favorable variations will increase the
frequency in a population. The activity had a great representation of each generation and what

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the end results looked like after the end of each generation. Finches with favorable variations
produced offspring and became more common in populations.

Works Cited
Grant, R. Peter and B. Rosemary Grant. Evolution of Character Displacement in Darwins
Finches. Science Vol 296, 14 July 2006, 224-227.
---. Unpredictable Evolution in a 30-Year Study of Darwins Finches. Science Vol 313,
26 April 2002, 707-711.
Jurmain, Robert, et al. Human Origins: Evolution and Diversity. Cengage Learning, n.d
Schafer, M. (2016). Lecture on The Development of Evolutionary Theory. Personal Collection of
M. Schafer, Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, UT.