You want to determine the effects of a certain fertilizer on the growth of orchids grown in a greenhouse. Materials that are available to you include: greenhouse, 100 orchid plants, water, fertilizer, and soil. You want to know if the orchids will grow best with a weak concentration of fertilizer, a medium concentration of fertilizer, or a high concentration of fertilizer. What is your hypothesis, based on your knowledge of what fertilizer does?

"1. it should be, it has been for about 20 years, and it's really not much different in the end than breeding animals to have particular traits. there are always concerns about genetically engineered animals/plants affecting the environment in unexpected negative ways, but i can't think of an example where the fears didn't turn out to be baseless.  

first, as you point out, it would be a great advance in pharmacology, to be able to tailor drugs and their doses to me. the pros involve better medical treatment. the cons involve privacy issues like insurance companies denying coverage to people with genetic risk factors. looking at dna markers wouldn't affect the frequency of genetic diseases, but it would allow detection of them earlier. and ok, actually i suppose that if people used this information to avoid having children with genetic diseases, some might decrease in frequency."

the correct answer is: b. pantala flavescens, because these organisms would have a high level of genetic variation due to sexual reproduction.  

because involves two organisms (parents) whose genetic material combines, sexual reproduction leads to genetic variation in new generations of offspring. the offspring is an unique organism, with new genome, more protected with the higher ability to adapted. this process is fundamental to evolution.