Beetles Lab Report

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Fluctuating Asymmetry in Stag Beetles 1. INTRODUCTION Fluctuating asymmetry gives an idea of a populations state of adaptation, which are the random deviations from perfect symmetry (VanValen 1962) of organisms in the population, which can be due to genetic and environmental stresses (Graham et al. 2010) These environmental stresses can include sexual selection. Sexual selection is the process resulting from differential mating success of individuals within a population which gives rise to secondary sexual characters which are can give the individual an advantage in courtship ( Anders et al, 1992). One mechanism of sexual selection is competition (Darwin 1871) for mates between individuals, this can result in the acquisition of characters…show more content…
Fig.5 shows that the FA in the hind tibia is smaller then the FA of the mandibles seen in Fig.6. In Fig.5 the mean FA is around 0.01 with the most measured FA between 0.0 -0.01. In fig.6 the mean FA is larger at 0.1 with most measured FA around f 0.5-0.15. This clearly shows that on average the FA is larger in the mandibles compared to the FA in the hind tibia. After carrying out a paired t-test it was found that t= 6.160, df= 19, p=0.000) therefore it was found that there is was a significant difference between the size of average FA in the mandibles and the hind tibia in the stag…show more content…
This means larger beetles have greater symmetry. This could be down to the larger beetles having a selective advantage for mates as well as defending food sources so are better buffered against stresses causing fluctuating asymmetry. It is clear of the existence of intrasexual arms race which causes the increase in the size of males weaponry. The individuals with the highest phenotypic quality will be able to produce large symmetrical weapons. This could suggest that the size of the mandibles in the Stag Beetles are a sign of male quality ( Anders et al, 1992). This could therefore explain why the males with the largest body sizes have some of the lowest magnitudes of fluctuating asymmetry. Although the results from this study has shown that fluctuating asymmetry is significantly larger in the mandibles of a stag beetles rather the its hind tibia, due to the mandibles being under high sexual pressures so are more extreme, there are some problems of unreliability to consider with the study. Firstly the sample size may be too small and limited. Only 20 specimens where used and they were all from the same muesum samples this means the results may not be able to be generalied to every stag beetle
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