A Study On Rapid Evolution

Being able to write is how I got to search for new information and being able to read was how I absorbed the newly found content. The internet was such an amazing thing, biology and evolution wasn’t at all what I had thought or learned by word of mouth. I was always convinced evolution meant we came from monkeys, but my research outside of school lead me to the truth; that there are five ways evolution occurs. One is when a population of a species is secluded and left without a connection to other populations. Without any connection they have created a gene pool; this doesn’t mean everyone it mating with their relatives, but it means they have less chance of diversity than the populations that are not secluded and therefore the features that may have once been non-dominant will now become more and more prevalent in those who are secluded. Eventually the secluded population will no longer share enough DNA with the free population to reproduce with each other, thus becoming a new species regardless of how similar they may look. I would have never learned any of this in school; at least I wasn’t learning it when I wanted to. Of course when the subject finally arose when I was a junior in high school I knew far more than what was expected of me which inadvertently helped me to pass all the tests and examinations we were

I have always found human evolution very fascinating. I think it is incredible how we have evolved from caveman to complex modern-day humans. The fact that such an enormous change did not occur overnight, but through a slow process that took place over hundreds of thousands of years, gives me the urge to continue researching. I am curious about how we have evolved dramatically in terms of appearance, characteristics, lifestyle, and many other aspects. Not only are these adaptations interesting, they are also essential to our entire existence. Without evolution, humans would’ve died out due to the various diseases we are exposed to daily. Evolution is a constant undergoing process as our surroundings continue to change. We must adapt to these changes in order to successfully survive. I want to

Charles Darwin first suggested how evolution occurs in the natural selection process. Natural selection is the survival and reproduction of individuals with different phenotypes resulting in interactions with the environment. Genetic drift and gene flow can contribute to evolution too. Genetic drift is a random change in allele frequencies of a population. Gene flow is the movement of alleles between two or more populations. This is how populations evolve. In this lab, I completed an activity about Darwinian snails. A biologist named Robin Seeley suspected that New England’s periwinkle snail population was evolving due to predation by green crabs and she compared the old shells of these snails to the new ones. Robin Seeley recorded her results from the shell measurements to find the difference. It turned out that the range in shell thickness was different from 1980 and 1871. We completed a simulation online about the Darwinian snail population and the green crab population. This lab taught me the roles of mutations in introducing new genetic variation within a population! Populations evolve by the means of natural selection. I now understand the role of genetic variation, inheritance, and selection the evolution of a population. Being aware of the great diversity of living things on earth is just as important as knowing the long process of evolution. This lab was more than worth

Evolution is the key thread running throughout this text, signifying its importance to the author and readers. It is emphasized greatly because that is how we understand ourselves, our past, present and even the future. Through evolution we have discovered when the first organisms came around and how modifications led to the first fish to migrate to land about 375 million years

Human beings are still very much evolving. According to recent studies, genetic changes in women over the years have decreased the age at which they birthed their first child. In one study the age decreased as much as four years from age 26 down to age 22 (Allen 2011). Another concurrent study looked at women’s physical appearance in correlation with the number of children they had. The resulting data revealed that, “stout, slightly plump” women had more children. Researchers found that these characteristics are passed on from mothers to their offspring and so forth (Harrell 2009). Therefore, as these traits are passed from generation to generation, the population grows and these characteristics become more prominent in the population. All of these findings confirm that the evolution of human beings is still very much an ongoing process.

Learning about my interest improved my understanding of hard you have to work to get where you want to be. What I learned about my interest is that it takes a lot of

2) How should stabilizing and disruptive selection affect the magnitude of phenotypic variation from one generation to the next? (Ch. 7)

It is known as one of the slowest natural processes on Earth. It took roughly 3 million years for protein molecules to evolve into complex one celled organisms. However, it can be sped up by human intervention. One of these examples being the dog species. This form of evolution took about 10 thousand years to complete the first tamed dog. Over the centuries, our ancestors selected dogs to breed based on specific behavioral and physical properties. This includes docility, aggression, strength and so on. If we do this system for multiple generations then it will make a desirable species. The same thing happens in nature. An animal will live or die based on behavioral and physical attributes, and through time, new and better species emerge. Many argue that god created all species on Earth but this is a fact, tested through time, that species can be made through natural selection or human intervention. This is what Darwin argued; that there is a long process that changes species throughout

Evolution is the change in population over time (Romero, Audeskirk & Audeskirk, 2011). I believe evolution is one of the most interesting topics of biology. Evolution not only occurs within humans, but every living thing on earth. Evolution also deals with natural selection. Natural selection is to evolution, as Saipan is to the Micronesian Islands. When dealing with evolution, there’s always a part where natural selection takes place.

I learned about Von Willebrand Disease, what it is, how it is different from Hemophilia, how it affects people both physically and emotionally, some of the daily struggles, and how DNA and genetics are connected with such diseases. Learning facts about my topic allowed me to discover things I have an interest in. For example, learning about how gene mutations can affect one’s life so much inspired me to use my interest in genetics to possibly find a way to cure or make life easier for these patients. Reading about how they struggle day-to-day put things in perspective for me. I realized my personal struggles which I think are the end of the world, aren’t nearly as bad as it could

The topic that I found most interesting was race. Race and especially racism is something that many people don’t like to talk about. Race is a sensitive topic for some and can turn into an argument very quickly. I enjoyed reading the virtual lecture, it was interesting to learn Anthropologist Richard Lewontin discovered that roughly 80% of all the variation between humans can be found within any given racial group. The Sorting people game is an eye opener that you can’t look at a person and determine what they are or where they come from. I also enjoyed the Ted Talks videos, they have speakers with very educated perspectives. In the textbook “The Essence of Anthropology” chapter 7, I read the story about Ota Benga who was captured in Congo and brought to America to be placed in a New York zoo. I have never heard of this story before this class. I know our history is a dark one, but this happened in 1904 and the horrible treatment went on through 1916 until he took his life. Many in an attempt to move away from racism would say “they do not see color”, or “racism is not real because there’s no such thing as race”. We live in a

This quarter I took FB’s class disease and epidemics where we learned a bunch of things that I never knew like how the immune system fights bacteria and viruses, we learned what the difference between between a pandemic and an epidemic are, quarantine and civil rights and public health and what I thought was the coolest part was how we learned about how living in different areas can make you more or less likely to get certain diseases.

I participated in the Urban Barcoding Project, in which my group researched the biodiversity in abandoned railroads and connected to the overarching theme of ecological succession. I was thrilled to learn new lab techniques from a researcher and present our findings at a symposium to professional scientists. In AP Biology, I thoroughly enjoyed the hands-on experience of my cat dissection lab. Despite the stench of formaldehyde, the thrill of observing the inner workings of organ systems fueled my love for anatomy. To tie everything together, I took a genetics course to understand the role of a single gene.

Many scientists in the past, such as Aristotle and Plato, believed that there were no changes in populations; however, other scientists, such as Darwin and Wallace, arose and argued that species inherit heritable traits from common ancestors and environmental forces drives out certain heritable traits that makes the species better suited to survive or be more “fit” for that environment. Therefore, species do change over a period of time and they were able to support their theory by showing that evolution does occur. There were four basic mechanisms of evolution in their theory: mutation, migration, genetic drift, and natural selection. Natural selection is the gradual process by which heritable traits that makes it more

As the class continued on I started to find it more interesting, because although I disagreed with the ideas, it was intriguing to understand what other people meant when they told me they believed in evolutionary theory. I especially enjoyed the video on homo Naledi, it was exciting and I thought it gave an in depth idea of hominin evolution. It is important for Paleoanthropologists to continue to their work because their could so much more evidence that has not been uncovered yet. Earlier in my paper I said that my previous understanding of hominin evolution was a straight line of an ape evolving to a human. However that is not at all the case. The hominin evolution is similar to many branches coming off of each other into eventually what