Friday, October 24, 2014

Rana and Rameia's Color Variation Presentation

13 comments:

  1. Evidence Slide:
    Why is there a correlation between turbidity and number of predators in the pools?
    Does turbidity affect the survival rate of the predator fish?

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    1. It is possible that the predators of guppies tend to only survive in darker areas, hence why they are found most commonly in areas with higher turbidity, and not in areas with less turbidity.

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  2. What mechanism of change do you think could have supported your claim?

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    1. For the areas in which drab guppies dominate, the cause for this trend would have been natural selection. The bright guppies would have been selected against because they would be seen easily by the predators. While in areas where bright guppies dominate, the cause would have been sexual selection because predators do not thrive as commonly in those areas and would not have been large enough of a threat to cause the trend. But, the females could have preferred to mate with bright males causing them to be more advantageous in those pools.

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  3. Overall, the presentation had a nice flow and reasoning supporting your claim. I like how you decided to use the turbidity of water for comparison. But how did you receive the percentages in the pool of bright vs drab guppies? And does your reasoning about the turbidity explain the trend seen in the coloration of the guppies?

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    1. Thank you, I'm glad you liked the presentation. To receive the percentage of bright guppies, we took the total amount of bright guppies in a pool and divided it by the total amount of guppies in that pool. To receive the percentage of drab guppies. we took the total amount of drab guppies in a pool and divided it by the total amount of guppies in the pool. If you are looking for further explanation, we provided more details in the Notes slide of the presentation. Also, we added percentages of bright vs drab male guppies only, and their explanation is on the notes slide as well.

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  4. It would probably be beneficial to make your percentage of drab guppies vs. bright guppies just taking the males into consideration because females do not appear in these environments with the bright phenotype at all. Therefore, this makes it seem as though the increase was not as substantial as it actually was.

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    1. That is very true, thank you for your feedback. Instead of changing the percentages completely, I left them with their explanation and also showed on another slide the percentages of the bright versus drab male guppies without the females included since, as you said, they never have the bright phenotype.

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  6. The claim is very well stated. The presentation of the number of fish in percentage form also helped to enhance the presentation. My only concern is that the correlation between the number of predatory fish and turbidity is not explained enough.

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    1. I'm very glad that you liked the claim and percentages. To address your concern, I understand that we did not fully explain the relationship of number of predators and turbidity of water, my apologies. To clarify, the number of predatory fish increases as the amount of turbidity increases due to the fact that the predators of the guppies can not survive in areas with less turbidity.

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  7. I like the use of the percentages as a comparison. What's the reasoning for why females would be more attracted to the brightly colored males in the pools with lower turbidity?

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  8. Your presentation is well worded except for maybe the notes slide. It could be a little more clear. I like how you used percentages for the drab and the bright colored guppies but how could you use those percentages in your reasoning to better support your clam?

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