Bird Beak Lab

In the Bird Beak lab, the question was if natural selection occurs in a population, then how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of the species.  My hypothesis was if natural selection occurs in a population, then less offspring will be created for each bird beak. In this lab, our group used different types of beaks to grab different types of food. The types of food that were included in this lab was seeds(macaroni, and paper clips), leaves(rubber bands), and toothpicks(seed pods). We did an experiment where we excluded toothpicks and were given 30 seconds to grab food from the table and count them up to determine how many children were made from each type of beak This was repeated 3 times. At the end, my hypothesis was incorrect. The results were about the same as our part one solution. The spoon beak bird raised one chick, the binder clip beak bird raised 16 chicks, the scissor beak bird raised 11 chicks, and the tweezer beak bird raised 19 chicks. This was caused by how we had other types of food to rely on. The bird beaks heavily relied on getting leaves, and seeds. The seeds pods were not beneficial for the bird beaks.
An error that could have occured during this experiment was counting how much food we had each round. We may have miscounted the amount of food we had every round. This was caused by not counting the food carefully enough. The effect of this was that we had miscounted the amount of chicks raised and also the results from the whole experiment. A suggestion to reduce this error is to count carefully by five's or counting at least twice to make sure you counted right. Another error that could have occured in the experiment is the timing. During the rounds, we had 30 seconds to grab food from the table. We may have been given too much or little amount of time to find food. This was caused by not paying full attention to the time and as a result, our data may not have been accurate. This can be reduced by getting a timer that can stop at a certain time limit to get exact results.
The purpose of this lab was to show how different beaks adapt to different types of food in an environment. This relates to Darwin's observations and conclusions in the constant change vodcast. We learned about the four observations that Darwin made that relates to evolution and natural selection. We also learned about his two conclusions that he made which is there are winners and losers, and population looks like the winners. We used his two conclusions to determine our results.