Natural Selection is a process when the environment “chooses” which trait will best fits the environment. The organism that is a best fit to the environment has a better chance of survival, and a better chance of passing on its traits. The Desert Iguana and the Inselberg Iguana are similar but they also have different characteristics. Their skin color and diet, are just some of the things that are different. The Inselberg Iguana’s skin color is darker than the Desert Iguana. It’s darker skin color help it blends in with the Inselberg’s rocky terrain, escaping predators.
The darker skin trait is in the Inselberg Lizards genes. The lighter Inselberg Lizards are dying off because predators can easily spot them and rarely survive to reproduce. Much less often than the darker skin one. Through time, they eventually became all darker skin and now seen as a different species to the Desert Iguanas. Speciation is a process in which one species gives rise to another, and this process may have occur here. There are two types of speciation, allopatric and sympatric speciation. allopatric speciation is when isolation, time, and natural selection may cause a new species to emerge.
This type of speciation often requires geographical isolation of a small population of the species. Sympatric speciation is when speciation occurs even when they’re no geographical barriers or isolation. This occurs when a small portion of the population start to become another species even when they are not isolated. In the case of the Inselberg Lizards and the Desert Iguanas, allopatric speciation probably is the caused since there is the Inselberg, which is surrounded by small pile of boulders to small mountains. The gene pool variability of a species may have tons of traits that wasn’t expected to be there.
The Essay on Endangered Species 5
The American Alligator is an amazing reptile, having survived almost unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. Having been hunted almost for extinction, this reptile has made an amazing comeback in recent years. Inhabiting almost every body of water in Florida. American alligator are not considered endangered species, but these harsh looking creatures are threatened. There are two kinds of ...
It could vary from height, size, eye color, etc. For example the Desert Iguana may also have a darker skin trait like an Inselberg Lizard, but it may be recessive. For the Inselberg Lizard, because the darker skin helps it blend in, the trait now may be dominant. Sources of errors in this experiment might be its habitat, small sample size, and time. The Inselberg Lizards and the Desert Iguana may not reproduce because even though the environment are very similar, it still may not be exactly the same as it’s real environment.
With the given time, it might be too soon to see if the two will eventually mate or not. Repetition and a large sample size is needed to make a more accurate results. For future experiment, the amount of lizards and iguanas should increase and the time of observation should increase also. Citations: http://evolution. berkeley. edu/evolibrary/article/evo_25 http://users. rcn. com/jkimball. ma. ultranet/BiologyPages/S/Speciation. html ———————– [pic]
