Transcript Breeding Bunnies Lab - Moore Public Schools

Breeding Bunnies Lab
Problem: What happens to the frequency of
harmful recessive genes during evolution?
FF or Ff
Background:
F—allele for fur (dominant)
f—allele for no fur (recessive)
Frequency—how often something occurs. Written as a
ff
decimal.
Procedure:
1. Make sure you have 50 blue beads and 50 pink
beads in your bag. These are the alleles for adult
rabbits.
2. Label 3 bowls or cups as follows: FF, Ff, ff
–
–
F = blue
f = pink
3. The rabbits reproduce: pick out 2 beads at a time
(these are the babies), record the beads in your
data table, and put the beads in the proper cup.
4. Repeat this until every bead is gone from the bag,
recording the data each time. This represents
the 1st generation.
5. The FF and Ff rabbits survive, and go back in
the bag, the ff rabbits die, because they have
no fur. Keep the ff rabbits in the ff bowl (do
not put them back in the bag).
6.Repeat the procedure for 10 generations,
recording the data for the whole experiment.
7.Calculate the frequency of the F allele and the
f allele for each generation.
All Bunnies
Generation
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Surviving Bunnies ONLY
Number of FF
Individuals
Number of Ff
Individuals
Number of ff
Individuals
# pieces # bunnies
# pieces # bunnies
# pieces # bunnies
Number of
F Alleles
Number of f
Alleles
Total
Number of
Alleles
Gene
Frequency of F
Gene
Frequency of f
Data Analysis: DUE TOMORROW!
1. Graph the frequencies of the F and f alleles.
2. What happened to the f allele? Did it completely
disappear?
3. Explain what would happen to the rabbit
population if the hairless gene was dominant?
4. What would happen to the frequency of the f
allele if it was not harmful?
5. Did the genes of the rabbit population change
over time? Explain.
6. Explain how this activity shows evolution.