natural selection
Storyboard Text
- Starting Population
- Variation
- Overproduction and Competition
- Monarch butterflies live in open fields and meadows to feed on nectar and pollinate the surrounding wildflowers. These butterflies are preyed upon by birds, snakes, toads, reptiles and dragonflies.
- Adaptation and Selective Pressure
- However, not all monarch butterflies are born with their distinct orange, white and black colours. Some butterflies are born with a mutation that makes them predominately white. Since the mutations are random they can occur whenever, ensuring guaranteed variation in the population of the species.
- Survival
- All of the butterflies that are living in the meadow are competing with one another for resources and to stay hidden from their predators. As the population of the butterflies increase, the more difficult it becomes to find food and the easier it becomes to be put under selective pressure.
- Differential Reproduction
- However, the white monarch butterflies are more noticeable to predators due to their mutation making them easier targets for them. Since the white butterflies stand out in this environment it becomes more difficult to adapt. While the orange monarch butterflies resemble the wildflowers surrounding them making them less noticeable to predators. The ability for orange butterflies to survive longer allows them to better adapt to their environment.
- Due to their colour, the orange monarch butterflies are able to survive as they are not the ones that are under the severe selective pressure as the white butterflies are. As they are able to survive more often than the white butterflies, they are able to live longer and are the more common colour of their generation.
- As the orange monarch butterflies were not targeted as greatly by the predators they were the ones that survived long enough to reproduce. Therefore, they were able to pass their heritable traits to their offspring making their offspring orange as well. As more generations pass, the larger the orange population will become making the majority of the population the most fit to survive in this environment.
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