NAME:_______________________

 

PEANUT LAB

Variation and Natural Selection

Directions:

  1. Obtain 50 peanuts and measure in millimeters the length of each peanut.
  2. Record your results in a table giving the lengths and the number of peanuts for each length.
  3. Why is the fact of different lengths evidence of variation within the species?
  4. Make a bar graph using your data. What should you label for your vertical axis? What should you label for your horizontal axis?

 

Questions:

  1. Describe the overall shape of your bar graph.
  2. What may have caused the peanut-size variation you observed?

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  3. How do the numbers of average-length peanuts compare with the numbers of very large and very small peanuts?

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  4. What size is the largest peanut measured? The smallest?

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  5. The peanut supplies the seed with energy. What is the relationship of the peanut size to the amount of energy available to the seed?

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  6. What might have caused the large and small sizes of the peanuts measured?

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  7. If the environment changed so that a very large peanut was an advantageous variation, what would happen over time to the peanut?

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  8. Describe an environmental change that would favor the much larger peanut. Can you think of a change that would favor the much smaller peanut?

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  9. Why do you think that most peanuts are not the size of the smaller peanut?