Question

Fire ants in the southeastern United States were accidentally introduced over seventy years ago. Stings from fire ants can be deadly to the native fence lizard. Fence lizards that have lived in areas with fire ants for many generations have longer legs than fence lizards that have not lived in areas with fire ants until more recently.

Which statement BEST describes how the legs of the fence lizard changed over time? (AKS 4c)

Question 4 options:

Over time, fence lizards with longer legs were more likely to survive and passed this trait on to offspring.


Over time, fence lizards stretched their legs to increase leg length and passed this trait on to their offspring.


The lizards of each generation are born without longer legs. They then grow the longer legs to avoid stepping on the fire ants


The lizards living in areas where fire ants were first introduced used the venom from fire ants to grow longer legs. The trait for longer legs was then passed on to offspring

Answer 1

Over time, fence lizards with longer legs were more likely to survive and passed this trait on to offspring.

Step-by-step explanation:

This is a simple case of evolution by natural selection.

According to the theory of natural selection, only the strong members of a population are able to survive unfavorable changes to their environment and the survival genes are passed on to their offspring. The weak members of the population gradually fade away from the population.

According to the illustration, fence lizards with long legs have a proven record of being able to survive in areas with fire ants. This means that longer leg evolved as a result of selectional pressure. As the trait for longer legs were selected in the population, they are passed on to the subsequent generations.