The smooth-skinned, leaf-tailed gecko lives on Madagascar, an island off the coast of Africa. The gecko hunts at night and sleeps on trees by day. The color and pattern of the gecko’s body resembles leaves. Which of the following statements best explains how the gecko’s unique body color and pattern evolved?
a. Individuals with bodies that looked the most like leaves were better able than other individuals to avoid predators and passed on that trait to their offspringb. Gene sequences of all the geckos mutated to produce the leaf appearance when the ancestral geckos moved from mud to treesc. Individuals with bodies that looked the most like leaves interbred only with other green or brown lizard speciesd. All the geckos needed to look like leaves in order to live in trees and therefore acquired the necessary trait