Activity 101: Birds of a Feather? Challenge  How does Natural Selection help explain the extinction of the dodo bird and the success of the common pigeon? Key Vocabulary: Extinction Natural Selection Variation

Getting Started O Remember in our first activity, we were introduced to the idea of extinction and the possibility that human hunting contributed to the mammoth’s demise. O This last activity revisits some of the ideas raised in the first activity, providing you an opportunity to reflect upon and apply the understandings of evolutionary process and history that you have acquired during our unit.

Read the intro on page 56. There is a lot of diversity in every point in life’s history! Yet, every species becomes extinct eventually and all the species that exist today are descended from a relatively small number of earlier species! In fact, there is probably a single common ancestor for every species alive today – a Bacterial Species!!!

Reasons for Extinction:  Environmental Change  Competing Species  Habitat Loss  Disease  Human activity

Doing the Activity O Use Student Sheet “Three-Level Reading Guide: Birds of a Feather?” to guide you as you follow the reading on pages O When you are done, Answer Analysis Questions: 1, 2, 4 and 5b (Use the Discussion Web for 5b!)

Variation? What would Darwin Say? Common Pigeon Dodo Bird

Analysis #1 O Without human contact, the pigeon would have remained a wild species. O It could have been successful, but because of the limited range of the wild species, it would not have had nearly as large a population or as wide a range as the feral pigeon currently has. O Without human contact, the dodo may have thrived. But, its adaptation did not make it well prepared for climatic change or changing ecological conditions.

Analysis #2 O The evolution of feral pigeons could be described as speciation in process, but one that began through hybridizaton.

Analysis #4 O You should Disagree with the friend. O The reason the Dodo went extinct was not that is was poorly adapted but rather that it was too well adapted! O When introduced species/predators were introduced, dodo populations declined rapidly. O The process of natural selection is slow and unable to produce a modified species of dodo before the last dodo died. O If there had been more time, and a larger dodo population, the new conditions might have produced a population that could survive and co-exist with the invaders.

Should dodos be re-created? YESNO