Why Free Evolution Is Your Next Big Obsession
What is Free Evolution?
Free evolution is the idea that the natural processes of living organisms can lead to their development over time. This includes the appearance and development of new species.
Numerous examples have been offered of this, including various varieties of stickleback fish that can be found in salt or fresh water, as well as walking stick insect varieties that are attracted to particular host plants. These are mostly reversible traits can't, however, explain fundamental changes in body plans.
Evolution by Natural Selection
Scientists have been fascinated by the evolution of all living creatures that live on our planet for ages. Charles Darwin's natural selectivity is the best-established explanation. This is because individuals who are better-adapted survive and reproduce more than those who are less well-adapted. Over time, the population of individuals who are well-adapted grows and eventually develops into an entirely new species.
Natural selection is an ongoing process that is characterized by the interaction of three elements: variation, inheritance and reproduction. Variation is caused by mutations and sexual reproduction, both of which increase the genetic diversity within an animal species. Inheritance refers to the transmission of a person's genetic traits, which include recessive and dominant genes and their offspring. Reproduction is the process of producing viable, fertile offspring. This can be achieved via sexual or asexual methods.
All of these elements must be in balance for natural selection to occur. If, for instance, a dominant gene allele makes an organism reproduce and survive more than the recessive gene allele, then the dominant allele will become more prevalent in a population. But if the allele confers an unfavorable survival advantage or reduces fertility, it will be eliminated from the population. The process is self-reinforcing, meaning that a species with a beneficial characteristic will survive and reproduce more than one with an inadaptive trait. The more offspring that an organism has the more fit it is, which is measured by its capacity to reproduce and survive. People with good traits, like the long neck of giraffes, or bright white patterns on male peacocks, are more likely than others to reproduce and survive which eventually leads to them becoming the majority.
Natural selection is only a force for populations, not on individual organisms. This is a significant distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution, which claims that animals acquire characteristics through use or neglect. If a giraffe expands its neck to catch prey and the neck grows longer, then its children will inherit this characteristic. The difference in neck length between generations will continue until the giraffe's neck gets too long to no longer breed with other giraffes.
Evolution by Genetic Drift
In genetic drift, alleles of a gene could be at different frequencies in a group through random events. In the end, only one will be fixed (become widespread enough to not longer be eliminated by natural selection) and the other alleles diminish in frequency. This can lead to an allele that is dominant in extreme. The other alleles are essentially eliminated and heterozygosity has decreased to a minimum. In a small population this could result in the complete elimination of recessive allele. This scenario is called the bottleneck effect and is typical of an evolutionary process that occurs whenever a large number individuals migrate to form a group.
A phenotypic bottleneck may occur when the survivors of a catastrophe, such as an epidemic or mass hunting event, are condensed into a small area. The survivors will have an dominant allele, and will share the same phenotype. 에볼루션 could be caused by earthquakes, war, or even plagues. The genetically distinct population, if it is left vulnerable to genetic drift.
Walsh Lewens, Walsh, and Ariew define drift as a deviation from expected values due to differences in fitness. They give a famous instance of twins who are genetically identical, have identical phenotypes but one is struck by lightning and dies, while the other lives and reproduces.
This type of drift is very important in the evolution of a species. It's not the only method for evolution. The most common alternative is to use a process known as natural selection, in which the phenotypic variation of a population is maintained by mutation and migration.
Stephens asserts that there is a big distinction between treating drift as a force, or an underlying cause, and treating other causes of evolution, such as mutation, selection and migration as forces or causes. He claims that a causal process account of drift permits us to differentiate it from the other forces, and this distinction is vital. He further argues that drift is a directional force: that is it tends to reduce heterozygosity. He also claims that it also has a specific magnitude which is determined by the size of the population.
Evolution through Lamarckism
In high school, students take biology classes, they are frequently introduced to the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829). His theory of evolution, often referred to as "Lamarckism, states that simple organisms transform into more complex organisms through taking on traits that result from the organism's use and misuse. Lamarckism is usually illustrated with a picture of a giraffe that extends its neck longer to reach higher up in the trees. This could cause giraffes' longer necks to be passed onto their offspring who would grow taller.
Lamarck was a French Zoologist. In his inaugural lecture for his course on invertebrate Zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris on the 17th May 1802, he presented an original idea that fundamentally challenged the conventional wisdom about organic transformation. According to Lamarck, living creatures evolved from inanimate matter by a series of gradual steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest that this could be the case, but he is widely seen as giving 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 ultimately prevailed, leading to what biologists refer to as the Modern Synthesis. The theory argues that acquired traits are passed down from generation to generation and instead, it claims that organisms evolve through the selective influence of environmental factors, such as Natural Selection.
Lamarck and his contemporaries supported the idea that acquired characters could be passed on to the next generation. However, this concept was never a major part of any of their theories about evolution. This is largely due to the fact that 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 sometimes referred to as "neo-Lamarckism" or, more often epigenetic inheritance. similar site is a variant of evolution that is just as relevant as the more popular neo-Darwinian model.
Evolution by Adaptation
One of the most popular misconceptions about evolution is that it is a result of a kind of struggle for survival. This notion is not true and overlooks other forces that drive evolution. The struggle for existence is better described as a fight to survive in a particular environment. This may include not only other organisms as well as the physical environment.
To understand how evolution works it is important to understand what is adaptation. Adaptation is any feature that allows a living organism to survive in its environment and reproduce. It can be a physical feature, like feathers or fur. It could also be a characteristic of behavior, like moving into the shade during hot weather or escaping the cold at night.
The ability of an organism to draw energy from its environment and interact with other organisms, as well as their physical environment is essential to its survival. The organism needs to have the right genes to produce offspring, and must be able to locate enough food and other resources. In addition, the organism should be able to reproduce itself in a way that is optimally within its environmental niche.
These factors, together with mutations and gene flow, can lead to changes in the proportion of different alleles in the population's gene pool. The change in frequency of alleles can result in the emergence of new traits, and eventually new species in the course of time.
에볼루션코리아 of the traits we admire in animals and plants are adaptations, such as the lungs or gills that extract oxygen from the air, fur or feathers for insulation and long legs for running away from predators, and camouflage for hiding. To understand the concept of adaptation, it is important to distinguish between behavioral and physiological traits.
Physiological adaptations, such as thick fur or gills, are physical traits, while behavioral adaptations, such as the tendency to search for friends or to move to the shade during hot weather, aren't. It is important to keep in mind that lack of planning does not result in an adaptation. Inability to think about the implications of a choice even if it appears to be rational, could make it inflexible.