5. Free Evolution Projects For Any Budget
What is Free Evolution?
Free evolution is the idea that natural processes can cause organisms to develop over time. This includes the development of new species as well as the alteration of the appearance of existing species.
This is evident in many examples, including stickleback fish varieties that can live in fresh or saltwater and walking stick insect varieties that are apprehensive about particular host plants. These reversible traits do not explain the fundamental changes in basic body plans.
Evolution through Natural Selection
The evolution of the myriad living organisms on Earth is an enigma that has fascinated scientists for decades. The most well-known explanation is that of Charles Darwin's natural selection process, which occurs when individuals that are better adapted survive and reproduce more successfully than those who are less well-adapted. As time passes, the number of well-adapted individuals becomes larger and eventually forms a new species.
Natural selection is a cyclical process that involves the interaction of three factors: variation, inheritance and reproduction. Sexual reproduction and mutations increase genetic diversity in a species. Inheritance refers the transmission of a person's genetic traits, which include recessive and dominant genes, to their offspring. Reproduction is the process of generating viable, fertile offspring. This can be done by both asexual or sexual methods.
Natural selection can only occur when all the factors are in balance. For example the case where the dominant allele of a gene causes an organism to survive and reproduce more often than the recessive allele, the dominant allele will become more prevalent in the population. If the allele confers a negative survival advantage or lowers the fertility of the population, it will go away. The process is self-reinforced, meaning that an organism with a beneficial trait is more likely to survive and reproduce than one with an unadaptive trait. The more offspring an organism can produce the better its fitness, which is measured by its ability to reproduce itself and live. People with good characteristics, such as a long neck in Giraffes, or the bright white patterns on male peacocks are more likely to others to survive and reproduce, which will eventually lead to them becoming the majority.
Natural selection only acts on populations, not on individual organisms. This is a major distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution which claims that animals acquire characteristics through use or neglect. For instance, if the giraffe's neck gets longer through stretching to reach for prey its offspring will inherit a larger neck. The difference in neck length between generations will continue until the neck of the giraffe becomes too long to not breed with other giraffes.
Evolution by Genetic Drift
Genetic drift occurs when the alleles of a gene are randomly distributed in a group. At some point, only one of them will be fixed (become common enough to no longer be eliminated through natural selection) and the other alleles will decrease in frequency. This could lead to dominance in the extreme. The other alleles are essentially eliminated, and heterozygosity falls to zero. In a small population this could lead to the complete elimination the recessive gene. This scenario is called a bottleneck effect, and it is typical of evolutionary process when a lot of individuals migrate to form a new group.
A phenotypic bottleneck may also occur when survivors of a disaster like an outbreak or mass hunting event are confined to the same area. The survivors are likely to be homozygous for the dominant allele meaning that they all share the same phenotype and will therefore share the same fitness characteristics. This can be caused by war, earthquakes, or even plagues. Whatever the reason the genetically distinct population that is left might be susceptible to genetic drift.
Walsh Lewens, Walsh, and Ariew define drift as a deviation from the expected value due to differences in fitness. They give the famous example of twins that are genetically identical and share the same phenotype. However, one is struck by lightning and dies, whereas the other lives to reproduce.
This kind of drift could play a significant role in the evolution of an organism. However, it's not the only way to progress. The main alternative is to use a process known as natural selection, in which phenotypic variation in a population is maintained by mutation and migration.
Stephens argues there is a significant difference between treating drift like an agent or cause and treating other causes like migration and selection mutation as forces and causes. Stephens claims that a causal process explanation of drift lets us distinguish it from other forces and this distinction is crucial. He further argues that drift has a direction: that is it tends to reduce heterozygosity, and that it also has a size, that is determined by population size.
Evolution by Lamarckism
Students of biology in high school are often introduced to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's (1744-1829) work. His theory of evolution, also called "Lamarckism which means that simple organisms develop into more complex organisms by adopting traits that result from the use and abuse of an organism. Lamarckism is typically illustrated with an image of a giraffe extending its neck to reach higher up in the trees. This would cause giraffes to pass on their longer necks to their offspring, which then grow even taller.
Lamarck the French zoologist, presented an innovative idea in his 17 May 1802 opening lecture at the Museum of Natural History of Paris. He challenged the traditional thinking about organic transformation. According to him living things evolved from inanimate matter via an escalating series of steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest that this might be the case, but his reputation is widely regarded as having given the subject its first general and thorough treatment.
The most popular story is that Lamarckism was a rival to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and both theories battled it out in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually won and led to the creation of what biologists refer to as the Modern Synthesis. This theory denies the possibility that acquired traits can be inherited, and instead suggests that organisms evolve by the symbiosis of environmental factors, like natural selection.
Although Lamarck supported the notion of inheritance by acquired characters and his contemporaries paid lip-service to this notion however, it was not a major feature in any of their evolutionary theories. This is partly because it was never tested scientifically.
However, it has been more than 200 years since Lamarck was born and in the age genomics there is a vast amount of evidence to support the heritability of acquired traits. This is often called "neo-Lamarckism" or, more often, epigenetic inheritance. This is a model that is just as valid as the popular Neodarwinian model.
Evolution by Adaptation
One of the most popular misconceptions about evolution is that it is driven by a type of struggle to survive. In fact, this view is a misrepresentation of natural selection and ignores the other forces that determine the rate of evolution. The struggle for survival is more effectively described as a struggle to survive within a specific environment, which may involve not only other organisms, but also the physical environment.
Understanding adaptation is important to understand evolution. Adaptation is any feature that allows living organisms to survive in its environment and reproduce. It can be a physiological structure, such as fur or feathers or a behavior such as a tendency to move into the shade in the heat or leaving at night to avoid cold.
The capacity of a living thing to extract energy from its surroundings and interact with other organisms and their physical environments is essential to its survival. The organism must have the right genes to produce offspring and be able find sufficient food and resources. Furthermore, the organism needs to be able to reproduce itself at an optimal rate within its environment.
These factors, in conjunction with mutations and gene flow can cause an alteration in the ratio of different alleles within the population's gene pool. The change in frequency of alleles could lead to the development of novel traits and eventually new species in the course of time.
A lot of the traits we appreciate in plants and animals are adaptations. For Suggested Resource site , lungs or gills that draw oxygen from air feathers and fur for insulation and long legs to get away from predators and camouflage to conceal. To understand the concept of adaptation, it is important to distinguish between behavioral and physiological traits.
Physiological adaptations, like thick fur or gills are physical traits, while behavioral adaptations, such as the desire to find companions or to move to the shade during hot weather, are not. It is also important to remember that a the absence of planning doesn't make an adaptation. A failure to consider the implications of a choice, even if it appears to be rational, could make it inflexible.