Anisogamy Lab

In this lab, we studied the emergence of anisogamy. We did so, by trying to understand how to major factors affect the size of gametes. These factors were: difficulty-of-movement and aging-fitness loss. Gametes are an incredibly important area to study and understand because it helps us identify gender in species as well as understand the mating interactions of males and females. As Dawkins explains in chapter nine of his book The Selfish Gene, size of gametes has a huge effect on how much investment a parent will put into their offspring. Also, the size can affect their reproductive habits (Dawkins, 1976). For the first part of this lab, I the model using the steps in Methods. No hypothesis was necessary for this part so I will address the …show more content…
For this test part I had two hypotheses. The first was that if gametes have a lower aging-fitness loss, then there will be less investment in the gametes and, therefore, the gametes will be smaller. I believed this because parents who have more to lose by the death of a gamete have to invest more. So, if all gametes have a lower chance of death, then investment should decrease. For my second hypothesis, I stated that if the ease of mobility is low and aging-fitness loss is high, then gametes will be larger due to more investment in both. I believe this because if they cannot move and do not live ling, then the parent will invest more to increase survival. This causes adding of nutrients which causes increases in size for both. This also allows for them to reproduce with any close gamete. This again, can be supported by Dawkins. He states that the reason why certain gametes are smaller than others is because they have the ease to move and can move to find the gamete with the most nutrients (Dawkins, 1976). However, because they cannot move and because they die easier, they have to produce more of their own. Throughout this experiment I hope to prove my hypotheses