Question

Darwin studied actual birds on the Galapagos Islands instead of using a simulation, as you did in this lab. Studying natural selection in the field can be challenging. List at least three possible challenges Darwin might have faced.

Answer 1

Traits other than beak type might affect natural selection.

It could take many generations to observe adaptions to a population.

The environment may be complex and hard to study.

Changes in the environment may occur faster or slower than changes to the birds

The birds may be interdependent with other organisms that may change, too.

Answer 2

Darwin lived in a time where natural selection was a strange theory among scientists and researchers. This was especially true when other researcher Lamarck argued that organisms passed on helpful traits to their offspring, that they magically could form a new trait to adapt to their environment and then pass it onto their offspring. For example, if a giraffe was too short to reach food, it would grow a larger neck in its lifetime and then pass that trait onto its offspring. Darwin argued that, through the process of survival of the fittest, that short giraffe would die off and never receive the chance to pass on its shortness to future populations. Thus, taller giraffes would survive— they can reach food, shorter giraffes can’t— and the short genes would disappear. The fact that Darwin was introducing a new theory that nobody was used to at the time was peculiar, so he had few people on his side until long after his observations.
Another problem Darwin had was the lack of technology. To travel, Darwin would have to use boats to reach far away places, and of course, this took time.
The final problem Darwin had was the extra time it took for evolution, a process that can take up to millions of years. Evolution didn’t occur over night— it took time for Darwin to conduct experiments, observe, conduct them again, come to a conclusion, and so on.
Hope this helped a little!