Coyote Essay

bill johnson
March 6th, 2012
AP Biology The coyote in eastern Washington is very big component of the ecosystem. An average adult coyote is the size of a golden retriever dog and eats mice, rodents and various birds such as quail, doves and pheasants. Coyotes are a grey color and can be found clumped in packs. They will hunt at night or day, whenever they need to find food, but are primarily day time creatures. They only have pups once a year, in the spring, and they have them in litters. In the future eastern Washington’s climate will change. It will go from sage brush to the grasslands like the savanna. This will bring the first big change in the coyote. To catch prey coyotes use stealth and stalk them. Their grey fur does not fit in to the golden grasses on this new eastern Washington terrain. The coyote will have its coat change colors from a grey to a golden color so it can match its environment. The way this works is the coyote with the lightest fur in the population will catch the prey (because they blend in the best) they will be fatter and survive instead of skinny and possibly dying. These lighter colored, healthier coyotes will allow them to have offspring and it will help change the population more and more. Eventually they will have a complete color change and the genes passed on will only be light and golden. Now the coyotes will be fit for their environment. They have reached equilibrium and are not evolving now because they have reached a great fitness. The coyote was a great match for their environment until one thing changed and they needed to evolve again... their prey was diminished. The coyotes had eaten up much of the prey up and there weren’t many of the original population left. The birds and rodents were accustomed to hiding in sage brush but with only tall grasses they can’t hide from the prey and died off. To ensure survival the coyotes need to change their prey. Deer is abundant with minimal predators in the area. Deer eat the grasses and live perfectly fine in this new environment. So the biggest coyotes all mated with each other because they had the most food from what was left. The genes for a smaller dog became to change and coyotes became a large dog like a German Shepard. This new coyote was fit for its environment. Because they lived clumped, they could help take down deer as a pack. The small coyote gene is now gone the coyote has evolved to a bigger dog. Now eating deer the coyote can live in its environment and have plenty of food. Deer meat is lean and tougher than bird’s meat. The coyote need to work harder to chew this meat. What happens next is a result of random chance, but ended up helping these coyotes. A mutation in the genes occurred and changed a trait. This trait made them grow a second row of teeth that is razor sharp and tears apart the deer meet. This coyote slowly had more and more offspring that are the most productive because they could get the most females and mate with

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