Trevor Eichelberger

Title: Beak Type Evolution by Natural Selection

Introduction:
After reading in on this topic, I quickly realized this activity is recreating the birds
Charles Darwin saw when visiting the Galapagos. When he landed, Darwin found many birds
similar in size, coloration, and habits. When he examined them closer, he realized their beak
sizes and shapes varied dramatically. Despite the fact that these birds intrigued Darwin, they are
far too complex a group of animals for Darwin to have understood. Nevertheless, they played an
important role in helping him recognize the reality of the evolutionary process (Rothman). My
initial hypothesis was that the chopsticks, clothespins, and tongs would die out first and that
the chip clips would be the most successful beak type. I believe the chopsticks were
unfavorable because many people lack the skill needed to use chopsticks efficiently. The
clothespins inward angled beak made me believe they would be also inefficient. The tongs
simply seemed too long and awkward to successfully pick up the seeds one by one. Last but not
least, with its ridged teeth and flat base, I believe the chip clip will easily pick up the most
sunflower seeds and prove itself as the most favorable beak type.

Materials and Methods:

Sunflower Seeds
Dixie Cups
Assorted Beak Types: Chopsticks, Large and Small Hairclips, Clothespins, Chip clips,
Tweezers, Tongs, and a Binder clip
Table to Record Data
Timer

1. Disperse some sunflower seeds in front of each participant to represent their food source.
2. Give each person a beak type along with a Dixie cup to represent their stomach
3. Record the beginning number of each beak type in the table. (This will help us find the
beak frequencies later on.)
4. Set timer to desired testing time.
5. Once the timer is stared, the participants start using their beaks to pick up sunflowers
seeds, one at a time, and place the seeds in their stomach aka Dixie cup.
6. When the timer stops, everyone empties their cup and counts how many seeds the
collected.
7. Find the three best food collectors and the three worst collectors.
8. Then replace the three worst beaks of that round with the corresponding three best beaks.
9. Record the new number of beaks for that round.
10. Repeat steps 4 9 until you finish Round 5.
11. Now go back and calculate the beak frequencies from each round. Do this by dividing the
number of that beak group from the total number of beaks participating and multiply your
answer by 100. Ex. (10 chip clips / 20 total beaks * 100 = 50%)

Results:

Data Table

After examining the data in both table and chart formats, its quite surprising to see that out of
the seven tested beak types, only four reproductively broke even, and only two beak types
ended up reproducing more than they started with. I decided to omit the binder clip from the
chart because it would be impossible to see in this line graph considering it had only lasted one
round.

Conclusion:
After completing this activity and seeing the firsthand results, I would mostly agree with
my original hypothesis. I say mostly because it turns out that the tongs were actually quite
successful, but I had predicted they would be inefficient. I did predict that the Clip Chips would
be successful and they proved it doubling their population! I originally assumed the clothes pins
and chop sticks would die out first. Although none of the beak types fully died out in our class,
clothespins and chopsticks definitely seem to be the most inefficient, dropping from five lives to

only two. In this situation my hypothesis mostly stands correct but another test might easily
disprove it using different participants or even a different food source. However, if a second
groups results were to match mine, my theory might become more validated and more broadly
accepted.

Discussion:
Scientific Method is making a hypothesis based on observations, then testing that
hypothesis and accepting or rejecting your prediction. My dumbed down definition of scientific
method would be Trial and Error or Guess and Check. This process of prediction making,
testing predictions, and drawing conclusions based on those predictions is used in almost
everything you could think of whether it be mathematics, psychology, even advertising and
business. After learning about scientific methods it is surprising to see how many fields its
actually used in. This activity allowed us to observe the other beaks in the class and then make a
prediction on what we thought the outcome would look like. We continued by testing that
prediction and finally in this report we get to express whether we accept our hypothesis or reject
it. In this lab we got to learn how favorable traits increase in frequency and unfavorable traits
decrease in frequency in a process known as Natural Selection. This process of natural selection
has created a good example of micro-evolution with these finches in the islands of Galapagos
(Truthinscience.org.uk).

References:
Rothman, Robert. 'Darwin's Finches'. People.rit.edu. N.p., 2015. Web. 7 Feb. 2015.
Truthinscience.org.uk,. 'Darwin's Finches'. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.