Darwinian Snails Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Darwinian Snails - Lab Report Example The paper tells that natural selection is a situation that occurs when nature selects those organisms that are well adapted to the environment for its reproductive mechanisms. It is evident that smaller snails are more susceptible to crabs, evident with blue snails in tank 2 for both trials. It was found that snails that were not damaged were found alive and had no shell chips. Snail death means a successful predation, as seen in tank 4 for trial 2. According to Seeley, â€Å"intense natural selection caused a rapid morphological transition in a living marine snail†. Natural selection by crabs is suggested to promote evolution of thicker shelled snails. Chemical defenses and behavioral avoidance mechanisms have no much effect on predation in marine environments as compared to morphological changes. The morphological changes such as shell wall thickness, shell length, shell height and the aperture area. Shell thickness contributes significantly to the environment that the snail s’ live. Shell thickness of the intertidal gastropods varies in comparison to the shores, which are intertidal and this will show the differential predation in relation to crabs. The varying shell thickness of the gastropods tends to be in parallel gradient to predation intensity and wave exposure. Another major factor that contributes to shell thickness is the predator-induced defenses, which usually suggest intertidal plasticity. Phenotypic plasticity refers to a situation where the predator will induce the formation of structures in the prey.