Preview - From Ecosystems To Speciation

More Finch Data

This CODAP frame has a much larger data set than those you have explored in the previous activities.  To help you gain a better understanding of the finches in the Galapagos, there are many more physical traits to explore.  Use the skills you developed in the previous activities to use CODAP to look at several traits and compare them across species and locations.

Not all of the traits were measured on each individual, so some traits will have more complete information than others.  We will focus on a trait that has a lot of data points, beak height.

Questions

Please answer the questions below.

Generally speaking, how are the different finch species similar or different?

For example, which species have similar ranges of beak height?  Which species have different ranges of beak height?

Generally speaking, how are the finches on different islands similar or different?  

For example, you might think about whether the islands all have the same species, or whether the islands all have similar distributions of beak height.

Generally speaking, are members of the same species on different islands different from each other? Give examples to support your answer.

Look at the histogram of beak heights for all finches.  There appear to be several peaks in it.  Are there multiple species or islands represented in each peak?  What does this suggest about the niches present in this ecosystem and the species that are in a peak together?

Do the answers to any of these questions change if you look at another trait with many data points, like wing length or N-UBkL (another measure of upper beak length)?  How?

Notes

These notes will appear on every page in this lesson so feel free to put anything here you'd like to keep track of.