A researcher conducted an experiment on fruit flies, exposing them to a wind tun

Question

A researcher conducted an experiment on fruit flies, exposing them to a wind tunnel that made it harder for poor fliers to feed. She found that, as predicted, individuals with shorter wings had lower survival and reproductive success when exposed to the wind-tunnel environment, but that there was no change in wing length in the population after 10 generations. In your view, what is the most reasonable possible explanation for those results? A. There may have been no heritability (h2=0) for wing length in that population. B. There had to be evolution for wing length because the wind tunnel clearly selected against short-winged individuals, so the researcher must have designed the study improperly. C. The ancestral fly population was never exposed to the wind-tunnel environment so alleles advantageous in that setting had not been previously selected for. D. The wind-tunnel environment may have been too harsh, causing high mortality, so no evolution occurred. E. There was an insufficient amount of time for a mutation to occur in the population, given that beneficial mutations are extremely rare.

Explanation / Answer

The ancestral fly population was never exposed to the wind-tunnel environment so alleles advantageous in that setting had not been previously selected for.

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