Problem III. A very large population of aflowering plant species occurs in a lowland meadow. A smallpopulation of the same species occurs on a remote mountainousregion more than 200 km away.

You collect seeds and raise several plants from each populationin the same greenhouse.

You measure flower size on plants of each population and findthe following:

Mountainous region: mean flower diameter = 1.2 cm

Lowland meadow: mean flower diameter = 5.2 cm

Now on a plant of each population, you self-pollinate one flowerand cross-pollinate another using pollen from a plant from the samepopulation. You collect the seeds that form, grow up the offspringthe greenhouse and measure their adult biomass. You find thefollowing:

Mountainous region selfed offspring:                  4.5 g

Mountainous region outcrossed offspring:         4.7 g

Lowland region selfedoffspring:                                              2.5 g

Lowland region outcrossedoffspring:                    4.8 g

In a short paragraph, provide a plausible evolutionaryexplanation for the differences you observe between thepopulations, based on what we have been discussing in class.

This is all the information I was given.