Honors Biology Name ___________________________

Rock Pocket Mice and Natural Selection

Introduction
The tiny rock pocket mouse weighs just 15 grams, about as much as a handful of paperclips. A typical rock pocket mouse
is just about 170 millimeters long from nose to rump, shorter than an average pencil. Their impact on science, however,
has been enormous. What’s so special about these little mice?

Populations of rock pocket mice are found all over the Sonoran Desert in the southwestern United States. There are two
common varieties—a light-colored variety and a dark-colored variety. Similarly, there are two major colors of substrate,
or surface materials, that make up the desert floor. Most of the landscape consists of light-colored sand and rock. Here
and there, however, separated by several kilometers of light-colored substrate, are patches of dark volcanic rocks that
formed from cooling lava flows.

PROCEDURE
Part I: You will be provided with a set of illustrations that represent snapshots of rock pocket mouse populations. Each
full-page illustration shows the color variation at two different locations, A and B, at a particular moment in time. Note:
The images are out of order.

1. Count the number of light-colored and dark-colored mice present at each location at each moment in time.
Record your counts in Table 1 below.

2. Place the illustrations in what you think is the correct order from oldest to most recent. Indicate your order by
labeling each shape in Table 1 with the number of its order (Label the oldest #1, the next in order #2, the next
#3 and the most recent #4).

3. Explain how you decided which illustration represents the most recent rock pocket mouse population and why
you positioned the others in the sequence as you did.

Shah

Table 1

Number of 12 10 10
mice with
light fur
Location A
Number of 1 2 2
mice with
dark fur
Number of 2 10 6
mice with
light fur
Location B
Number of 12 2 6
mice with
dark fur

Order
Part II: Watch the film The Making of the Fittest: Natural Selection and Adaptation. As you watch, look for an
explanation for the differences among the illustrations that will help you to confirm that the order in which you
arranged the illustrations is correct. Jot down ideas you have about the following as you watch the film:

1. Why are some mice light-colored and some mice dark-colored?

2. Does fur color provide any selective advantage or disadvantage?

3. What role does the rock pocket mouse play in the desert food web?

4. What can explain the differences among the illustrations?

Part III: Using what you learned by watching the film, check the order in which you arranged the illustrations.
Identify in Table 2, the correct order by placing the correct shape in the appropriate column. Once you are
satisfied you are correct, fill out the Table 2 using the counts you recorded above the illustrations.

Table 2
First Second Third Fourth
(oldest) (most recent)

Number of
mice with
light fur
Location A
Number of
mice with
dark fur
Number of
mice with
light fur
Location B
Number of
mice with
dark fur
Use colored pencils and the graphing space below to prepare a bar graph based on the data that shows the
distribution of the mice at locations A and B through time. Be sure to provide appropriate titles, keys and labels
for the x- and y-axes.
 HINT: you can do this by shading in columns using different colors (this is found under Table Design) and
adding text boxes for labels… OR you can draw the graph on a separate sheet of paper and paste a
picture of it in the space below.
QUESTIONS
1. Explain why a rock pocket mouse’s color influences its overall fitness. Remember that “fitness” is defined by an
organism’s ability to survive and produce offspring.

2. Explain
the
presence
of dark-
colored
mice at
Location
A. Why
didn’t
this

phenotype become more common in the population?

3. Write a scientific summary that describes changes in the rock pocket mouse populations at Location B. Your
summary should include:
 a description of how the population has changed over time.
 an explanation of what caused the changes.
 a prediction that describes what the population will look like 100 years in the future. Your prediction should
be based on trends in the data you have organized. You can assume that environmental conditions do not
change over the 100 years.
4. Define “mutation.”

5. Explain how the environment plays a role in changing the frequency of a mutant allele in a population.

6. Use the data and what you’ve learned about evolution to explain how mutation is a random process, but natural
selection is not random.

7. You are studying a recently discovered population of rock pocket mice with dark-colored fur that lives on
volcanic rock. You take a DNA sample from a member of this new population and determine the DNA sequence
of a gene known to play a role in fur color. The sequence you get is identical to that of the same gene in another
rock pocket mouse population with dark-colored fur that live on a different patch of volcanic rock. Which of the
following could explain this observation?
HINT: bold and change the color of your answer

a. The mice in the two populations evolved from the same ancestral population.
b. The volcanic rock caused the same mutation in each rock pocket mouse population, resulting in dark
coloration.
c. The same mutation spontaneously arose in the two different populations.
d. Both a and c are possible.
e. All of the above are possible.

8. For the rock pocket mouse, which of the following contributes to selective pressure favoring dark-colored fur?
Write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ next to each of the four possible responses. There may be more than one ‘yes’ response.
Predators _____________ Genetic mutations _____________
Rock color _____________ Availability of food for the rock pocket mice _____________
9. You are studying a new population of rock pocket mice in
Arizona. These mice live on a recently discovered patch of
dark-colored volcanic rock. This environment does not
have nearly as many visual predators as in previously
studied areas in New Mexico. You observed the
following numbers of light- and dark-colored mice on
this new patch of rock:

a. In one or two sentences, summarize the data presented in the graph.

b. Provide one possible hypothesis that would explain the observed data. Be sure to include the following
key words in your answer: selection (or selective), fitness (or fit), survival (or survive).