Adaptations of the Rocket Pocket Mouse

Adaptations of the Rocket Pocket Mouse

Rayhan, Leah, and Aysha

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Sources

Enviormental pressure

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Khan Academy. "Allele Frequency & the Gene Pool." Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/natural-selection/hardy-weinberg-equilibrium/a/allele-frequency-the-gene-pool#:~:text=The%20more%20variation%20a%20population,effectively%20under%20the%20new%20conditions. Accessed 20 May 2024.

Maggirias, John. "Chaetodipus intermedius." Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, 2001, https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Chaetodipus_intermedius/#:~:text=Rock%20pocket%20mice%20occur%20in,Ruff%2C%201999%3B%20Weckerly%20et. Accessed 15 May 2024.

Nachman, Michael W., et al. "Local Adaptation in the Rock Pocket Mouse (Chaetodipus intermedius): Natural Selection and Phylogenetic History of Populations." Heredity, vol. 96, no. 1, 2006, pp. 47-55, www.nature.com/articles/6800600. Accessed 20 May 2024.

Predators like owls and hawks posed a constant threat, driving genetic adaptations in the Rocket Pocket Mouse population. they needed to start changing color to blend into their enviorment to avoid being eaten. Another source of their enviormental pressure was the growing volcanic eruptions which blackened part of their enviorment.

Before Adapting

Before the adaptations, the two rock pocket mice variations were equal in their environment, until the variation that was at a disadvantage started dying off and the variations with the advantage started reproducing in great numbers.

For example in the black lava rock enviorment the mice with a disadvantage were the light colored fur mice and the dark colored fur mice were at the advantage, because of their ability to blend in and hide from predators.

The traits were pretty even in each environment before the environmental pressure but after they adapted certain traits would only be found in the environment that suited them (ie the dark-colored mice would only be found in the dark-colored environments)

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After Adapting

In the environments near volcanoes, where the rocks are darker, the dark-colored fur alleles were more frequent, but in the environment with light-colored sandstone, the allele for lighter-colored fur was more frequent.

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Adaptations

• The rmice lived on areas that became blackened because of lava as well as areas that were light colored because of sandstone. Because of this, they needed to blend in to hide from predators. So they started adapting to be the same color as their environment.

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Intro to the Species

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Rock Pocket mice are usually found in the southwestern area of the United States, in rocky desert environments. They are typically hunted by flying predators, which was a part of their enviormental pressure...... more on that later.

Background

If a population has a wide variety of genes/alleles, then that population is more likely to survive through natural selection because it is more likely to have organisms with the genes they need to survive in their environment. So those organisms with the advantaged alleles will reproduce more eventually leading to the majority of the population having the alleles needed to survive.

We can see this when we look at the Rock Pocket mice and how they sruvived with their enviormental prssures.

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What if...?

Unfavored?

The unfavored traits were more likely to get eaten because they would stand out against the color of the rock. (ie the light-colored mice got devoured by predators in the black lava rock enviorment because of the way they stood out.)

If the rock pocket mice had no genetic variation it would have taken much longer for them to have a variation that can thrive in that environment and a long time to have enough of that variation to be able to reproduce quickly. So the entire species could have been very close to being extinct.

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Mutations, Yay or Nay?

Genetic mutations are what originally caused two different colored mice, and when one color started dying in their environment the other colored mice reproduced a lot and that color mouse started to thrive because of the advantages their color provided them with.