Bird Beak Lab

Analysis
Recently we conducted a bird beak lab, which tested Darwin's observations and conclusions. We simulated 5 different types of birds' beaks with a spoon, a binder clip, a pair of tweezers, a pair of chopsticks, and a pair of scissors. The goal was for each bird to pick up as many pieces of "food" (rubber bands, macaroni, toothpicks, and paper clips). We saw evidence that individuals with better traits leave more offspring when the tweezers-beaked bird had a total of 15 chicks, the highest among all other birds. A possible explanation for this could be that their beaks were more adept at picking up food. Another of Darwin's conclusions was shown true in our lab: the fact that populations gradually start to look more like the "winners", or individuals with the better traits. The tweezers chicks made up about 21.4% of the population. An explanation for this is that the tweezers chicks collected more food and had more offspring.

Conclusion:
In this lab, we asked the question: if natural selection occurs in a population, how do changes in selective pressures affect the evolution of that species?  We also simulated a farming spraying pesticide incident in this lab, where the "birds" were left with 1/4 of their original pile of food. Theoretically, the birds with the most efficient picking up food skills would succeed with this challenge. We found that the tweezers still produced more chicks. This data support our claim because the tweezer bird was the most efficient.
Even though our data followed our hypothesis correctly the expected results there could be errors. The binder clip required the user to apply a decent amount of pressure in order to operate it and pick up the food. When doing the back to back trials, using the binder clip became tiring. This error might cause its  population to decrease, instead of staying the same or increasing. In the lab as a whole, each bird beak was operated by a different student, and each student would have a different skill level in terms of picking up the food. For example, someone who has been eating with chopsticks their whole life would find the chopstick beak very effective. This might have caused certain populations to be too high or too low. Due to these errors, in future experiments I would recommend students switching "bird beaks" in order to make the lab more objective and maybe finding an alternative for the binder clip, because of the finger pressure that is needed to use it.
This lab was done to demonstrate the concept of natural selection, and how every population will have winners and losers. From this lab I learned how natural selection would works in an ecosystem, and I now understand the concept better. Based on my experience from this lab, I can better understand why certain traits are more dominant in certain populations.