Question

On a small island, three separate phenotypes of a single species of cherry tree occur- small, medium, and large seeds. A small population of mice is introduced to the island, The mice are the only organisms that eat cherries on the island. When they eat a cherry, they digest it and excrete the pit or seed completely undigested at another location. The mice choose the larger cherries with medium and large seeds and leave the smallest ones uneaten. a. What type of selection, if any, is occurring here? b. Provide support for your answer. c. Graph what the population of cherry trees will look like over time. Make sure to label your axes.

Answer 1

a. Natural selection is occurring in this scenario.
b. The larger cherries with medium and large seeds are being selectively favored by the mice, as they are the ones being eaten and dispersed to new locations. This leads to an increase in the frequency of the medium and large seed phenotypes in the population over time.
c. Unfortunately, as a text-based AI, I am unable to create visual graphs. However, over time, the population of cherry trees would likely show an increase in the medium and large seed phenotypes, while the small seed phenotype would decrease in frequency. The x-axis could represent time, and the y-axis could represent the proportion or frequency of each seed phenotype in the population.