6.4.2 Breeding Hunting Dogs: Simulating Artificial Selection

Your Task: You are a dog breeder. You have perfected a breed of dog that is excellent at hunting and you make your living breeding and selling these dogs. A client who buys many of your dogs for a hunting lodge has asked you to breed pointy eared dogs. However, all of your dogs have non-pointy ears. The client offers to pay double if you can figure out a way to provide him with puppies that are All pointed ear.

Generation 1:

You cross a non-pointed ear male with a non-pointed female dog and you get the following results.

Phenotype for ee ________________

Phenotype for Ee ________________

% of Genotype ee:_______________

% of genotype Ee: ______________

What caused the trait for pointed ears to appear? Explain your answer.

__________________________________

________________________________

Generation 2:

Pick two puppies from Generation 1 and cross them. (Remember: Your mission is to create puppies with pointed ears for hunting.)

% of Genotype ee:_______________

% of genotype Ee: ______________

Generation 3:

Pick two puppies from Generation 2 and cross them.

% of Genotype ee:_______________

% of genotype Ee: ______________

Generation 4:

Pick two puppies from Generation 3 and cross them.

% of Genotype ee:_______________

% of genotype Ee: ______________

Questions:

Define artificial selection.

Put the following words in the order that they occurred in this example: population change, selection, variation

Describe how artificial selection is dependent on the variation in nature.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After several generations, what happened to the trait for non-pointed ears?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Did this population change occur gradually or all at once? _______________

Conclusion:

Write a paragraph describing why this example is evolution by artificial selection. Include the key components of evolution and a description of artificial selection in your answer. Be sure to use and underline the following words: variation, selection, and change.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photo credits:

DixieDingo_0019 by Apishion / Public Domain

Carolina_Dog by Calabash13 / CC BY-SA 3.0