1. Breeding Bunnies Lab
Problem: What happens to the frequency of harmful recessive genes during evolution?
Background:
F—allele for fur (dominant)
f—allele for no fur (recessive)
Frequency—how often some-
thing occurs. Written as a
decimal.
FF or Ff ff

2. Label 3 bowls or cups as follows: FF, Ff, ff
Procedure:
Make sure you have 50 blue beads and 50 pink beads in your bag. These are the alleles for adult rabbits.
Label 3 bowls or cups as follows: FF, Ff, ff
F = blue
f = pink
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.
Repeat this until every bead is gone from the bag, recording the data each time. This represents the 1st generation.
Beans do not have to be used. You can use beans, wads of paper, beads, etc. As long as there are 2 types. 2

3. 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).
Repeat the procedure for 10 generations, recording the data for the whole experiment.
Calculate the frequency of the F allele and the f allele for each generation.

4. All Bunnies
Surviving Bunnies ONLY
Generation
Number of FF Individuals
Number of Ff Individuals
Number of ff Individuals
Number of F Alleles
Number of f Alleles
Total Number of Alleles
Gene Frequency of F
Gene Frequency of f
# pieces
# bunnies 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Students can re-create in notebook/lab report or teacher can print this slide and distribute 4

6. Data Analysis: DUE TOMORROW!
Graph the frequencies of the F and f alleles.
What happened to the f allele? Did it completely disappear?
Explain what would happen to the rabbit population if the hairless gene was dominant?
What would happen to the frequency of the f allele if it was not harmful?
Did the genes of the rabbit population change over time? Explain.
Explain how this activity shows evolution.