9 Ae-1

Natural selection

Name Class Date

1 The drawings show two forms of the peppered moth (Biston betularia).

a What is in the cells of the moths that causes them to vary?

b If equal numbers of both types of moth were released in an area where there was a lot of
smoke and pollution, what do you think would happen to their numbers? Tick() one.
 Black moths would  Pale moths would  There would be  Both types
become rarer than become rarer than no change in would become
pale ones. black ones. their numbers. extinct.
c Explain your choice in part b.

2 a Bird Y lives on an island and feeds on nectar from both long flowers and short ones. Many
scientists think that bird Y evolved from bird X. Use words from the box to complete the paragraph
explaining how this may have happened. The words may be used more than once.

evolved grown lengths less longer

more population shorter X Y

Some birds like bird arrived on the island. They had a range of beak ,
some slightly than average and some slightly
than average. There were many flowers and the of birds grew. However, in
some years there was very little rain and so fewer flowers. All the birds could get nectar from
the flowers. However, the birds with the beaks were also
able to get nectar from flowers. The birds with slightly beaks
could not feed from these flowers. The birds with beaks got more food and
so were likely to survive and reproduce. The next generation of birds then
included more birds with slightly beaks. This process repeated over
thousands of years until all the birds had much beaks and looked similar to
bird . They had .
b What process caused the change described in the passage?

c Which scientists first came up with this hypothesis?

I can…
● recall that individuals in a population naturally vary
● explain the effects of this variation.

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