Biology 11th Edition by Cecie Starr ,Ralph Taggart

Exercise 5

Richard Lenski uses bacterial populations in culture tubes to develop model systems for studying evolution. Bacteria produce several generations in a day. Researchers can store them in the deep freeze, then bring them back to active form, unaltered, to directly compare ancestors and their descendants. Are bacterial models relevant to any evolutionary studies of sexually reproducing organisms Before you answer, read a short article by P. Raine and M. Travisano entitled "Adaptive Radiation in a Heterogeneous Environment" ( Nature , July 2, 1998: 69-72).