Bird Beak Lab Conclusion!

In this lab, we asked the question "If natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressure affect the evolution of that species?". My hypothesis for part 1 of the lab was " If there are winners and losers, then tweezers will win due to gaining most food while spoons will lose having difficulty with obtaining food". My group and I tested the 4 beaks and the tweezers had the most food in which it gained 38 chicks while the spoon beak only gained 10 chicks. In the end of part one, we found out that both scissor and tweezer beaks are the winners while spoon and binder clip beaks are the losers. The tweezers had more grip on the fake food while the spoon had no grip and very little chance with scooping up the little rubber pieces. This data supports my claim because my hypothesis was correct in the end giving me an understanding of how different phenotypes work in nature.

For part 2, we asked the same question but with a change in how many items you need to survive (10 pieces of food instead of 5) for each viable offspring. My group and I found out that this will make it harder to survive for all 3 years making each type of beak have less offspring. Tweezers still had the most offspring with the number of 13 while the spoon beak did not survive withing the first year with having not count of food in which that meant that there would be no future for the spoon beak phenotype to thrive. This information is based on the lecture notes we had for homework for the past week. My data supports my second hypothesis which is "If we tested with the different beaks, then later on the popultation will be mostly tweezers." since the tweezer will have the most offspring to survive for the future due to the beak gripping the food with ease.
While our hypothesis supported our date, there could have been errors due to miscounting the amount of food each beak gained or if the food spills out of the lab area making it difficult to obtain food in the given time. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend to count carefully and do it once or twice to make sure the amount of food you picked up is the right amount to determine if that beak phenotype will survive. Also pushing the two tables together will help prevent the loss of food that gets out of the lab-tested area.
This lab was done to demonstrate Charles Darwin's conclusions which are there are winners and losers; in the end most the population looks like the winners. From this lab, I understand more about Darwin's observations and conclusions with the help of the vodcast notes for homework that was given throughout the week. Based on my experience from this lab I already had little pieces of information that helped me comprehend what was going on through the two tests. This concludes my conclusion.