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white striped clover a case of natural selection

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I’m Looking Over a White-Striped Clover:
A Case of Natural Selection by Susan Evarts, Department of Biology, University of St. Thomas
Alison Krufka, Department of Biological Sciences, Rowan University
Chester Wilson, Department of Biology, University of St. Thomas
Case Objectives
By the end of this case, you will:
• Understand the process of natural selection and the importance of environment-specific adaptations.
• Be able to use the terms variation, adaptation, natural selection, and evolution as they apply to this and other scientific studies.
• Gain experience with the scientific method and be able to propose hypotheses and justifications to explain the distribution of the two variants of white clover.
• Design experiments to …show more content…

Fitness is determined by the ability of an organism to survive, grow, and reproduce in a particular habitat. You have probably heard the term “survival of the fittest,” but if an organism is not able to also grow and reproduce, it will not be able to pass any of its alleles (genetic information) on to its offspring. An organism that has high fitness does well in its habitat and passes those favorable alleles onto its offspring when it reproduces.
Go back and review the habitats you described in Exercise  and think about the factors that would be important for plant fitness. Then list the ecological differences between North Carolina and Minnesota that might affect the fitness of each variant. In other words which factors might increase plant growth, survival, and reproduction in each habitat, and which factors might inhibit them?
“I’m Looking Over a White-Striped Clover” by Evarts, Krufka, & Wilson

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PART III—INVESTIGATING CLOVER DISTRIBUTION
Now that you have considered the different habitats in which the white clover is found and the factors affecting fitness in clover, you

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