Question

Choose some characteristic other than color in peppered moths or long necks in Giraffes. Provide a DETAILED response on how the theory of Natural Selection, as proposed by Charles Darwin, can explain how this might evolve. In your discussion, be sure to incorporate: overproduction, variation, inheritance, struggle for existence, and many generations of change.

Answer 1

Characteristic: Bee-like form in Ophrys orchid flowers.

This trait was stablished in the Ophrys plants because it directly meant a difference in fitness. This orchids use bees as pollinators, initially there was variation around flower forms, some flowers looked more like bees and some others did not. Pollinators started to visit more frequently the flowers that looked like them, thus this bee-flowered plants reproduced more often. Turns out that the flower form is an inheritable threat, so that meant the bee-flowered plants started to overproduce, each generation increased the frequency of bee-flowered plants in comparison to other flower forms. Eventually the whole population was composed of bee-flowered plants. Orchids (and other plants) struggle for existance in many ways, one of those is in pollination, they develop mechanisms that allow them to more effectvively fertilize their flower to produce seeds, and that's what bee-flowered Ophrys plants achieved.