The Evolution Of Lizards: The Evolution Of Anolis Lizards

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Recommended: Evolution a complicated process

The Evolution of Anolis Lizards
John Opie
BIO 102L-DE
Professor Michael Vieth
July 21, 2017
Introduction:
According to The Princeton Guide of Evolution, evolution refers to change through time as species become modified and diverge to produce multiple descendant species (Losos et al. 2013). Charles Darwin proposed the idea of evolution as “decent with modification” in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859. He introduced the theory that natural selection was the mechanism of decent with modification. Individuals with certain heritable characteristics survive and reproduce at a higher rate than other individuals. Natural selection increases the adaptation of organisms to their environment over time. In this lab, the evolution of Anolis …show more content…

After doing a rough measurement of the lizards we then calculated the relative length which gave us a more accurate number. However, some of the measurement number could have been off or any of the calculations. One thing to change or add to this experiment would be tongue length. Due to the different habitats of the lizards, each species would have a different means for capturing food. One way we can observe this is their tongue length. We know their existing diet consists of small prey like spiders and crickets but overtime would the different habitats change that? We can measure their tongue lengths to see if they would increase, decrease, or stay the same.
Work Cited
Professor Michael Vieth. Biology 102 Lecture Notes.
Losos JB, Baum DA, Donoghue MJ. The Princeton guide to evolution. Princeton; Oxford:
Princeton University Press; 2013. Book.
Nicholson KE, Harmon LJ, Losos JB. Evolution of Anolis Lizard Dewlap Diversity. PLOS ONE. 2007 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000274 The Origin of Species: Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree. HHMI’s BioInteractive. 2017. Online.

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