A class of students is learning about how a drought can affect grasshopper populations. They go to a park in which the grass is mostly brown-colored. They know that grass turns brown when there are droughts.
Their teacher has a bag of 100 brown marbles and 100 green marbles. Two of the students spread all of the marbles from both bags over a field. Afterwards the class is asked to pick up as many marbles (representing predators attacking prey) as they can find in 5 minutes. The data collected is shown below.
Color
of Marble Number
Found
Number
Not
Found
brown 12 88
green 79 21
The teacher asks the class to look at the data and think about how this activity shows what would likely happen to a grasshopper species in time of a drought. What does the data show about a grasshopper species in times of drought?
A.
The brown-colored grasshoppers are more likely to be smaller than green-colored grasshoppers.
B.
The green-colored grasshoppers are more likely to be smaller than brown-colored grasshoppers.
C.
The green-colored grasshoppers are more likely survive and reproduce than brown-colored grasshoppers.
D.
The brown-colored grasshoppers are more likely survive and reproduce than green-colored grasshoppers.
C. The green-colored grasshoppers are more likely survive and reproduce than brown-colored grasshoppers.
This can be inferred from the data collected, as the green marbles (representing green-colored grasshoppers) had a much higher survival rate compared to the brown marbles (representing brown-colored grasshoppers). This suggests that in times of drought, green-colored grasshoppers are more likely to survive and reproduce, potentially leading to a shift in population dynamics within a grasshopper species.