Claytonia virginica is a woodland spring herb with flowers that vary from white to pale pink to bright pink. slugs prefer to eat pink-flowering over white-flowering plants (due to chemical differences between the two), and plants experiencing severe herbivory were more likely to die. the bees that pollinate this plant prefer also prefer pink to white flowers, so that claytonia with pink flowers have greater relative fruit set (reproductive success) than claytonia with white flowers. a researcher observes that the percentage of different flower colors remains stable in the study population from year to year. if the researcher removes all slugs from the study population, what would you expect to happen to the distribution of flower colors in the population over time?
a) the distribution of flower colors should not change.
b) the percentage of white flowers should increase over time.
c) the percentage of pink flowers should increase over time.
d) the distribution of flower colors should randomly fluctuate over time.

C) The percentage of pink flowers should increase over time.

Explanation:

According to the given information, the plants with pink flowers are able to reproduce more but are also have higher rates of herbivores as the slugs preferably eat the pink-flowered plants.

If slugs are removed from the system, the plants with pink flowers would have an absolute reproductive advantage over the plants with white flowers. This would increase the frequency of plants with pink flowers as they exhibit reproductive success over the plants with white flowers.

interphase

the period of cell growth when the cell synthesizes new molecules and organelles. the cell is not dividing and it constitutes the majority of the time spent in the cell cycle

prophase

changes occur in the nucleus and cytoplasm. the chromatin condenses to form structures (sister chromatids) visible with a light microscope and the mitotic spindle begins to form, but the nucleus is still in tact

prometaphase

the nuclear envelope fragments and the spindle microtubules attach to the kinetochores of the sister chromatids

metaphase

all the cell's duplicated chromosomes are lined up at an imaginary plane equidistant between the poles of the mitotic spindle

anaphase

begins when sister chromatids separate from each other and ending when a complete set of daughter chromosomes arrives at each of the two poles of the cell

telophase

the daughter nuclei form at the two poles of a cell

cytokinesis

the division of a cytoplasm to form two separate daughter cells. usually occurs during telophase during mitosis. this and mitosis make up to mitotic (m) phase of the cell cycle