How Free Evolution Has Changed My Life The Better

What is Free Evolution?

Free evolution is the concept that the natural processes of organisms can cause them to develop over time. This includes the appearance and growth of new species.

This is evident in many examples such as the stickleback fish species that can live in salt or fresh water, and walking stick insect species that have a preference for specific host plants. These reversible traits do not explain the fundamental changes in the basic body plan.

Evolution by Natural Selection

Scientists have been fascinated by the development of all the living creatures that inhabit our planet for ages. The best-established explanation is that of Charles Darwin's natural selection process, which is triggered when more well-adapted individuals live longer and reproduce more successfully than those less well-adapted. Over time, a population of well-adapted individuals expands and eventually becomes a new species.

Natural selection is an ongoing process that is characterized by the interaction of three factors including inheritance, variation, and reproduction. Variation is caused by mutation and sexual reproduction both of which enhance the genetic diversity of an animal species. Inheritance refers to the passing of a person's genetic traits to the offspring of that person that includes recessive and dominant alleles. Reproduction is the process of producing fertile, viable offspring which includes both sexual and asexual methods.

Natural selection is only possible when all the factors are in harmony. For example the case where a dominant allele at the gene causes an organism to survive and reproduce more often than the recessive allele, the dominant allele will become more prevalent within the population. However, if the gene confers an unfavorable survival advantage or reduces fertility, it will disappear from the population. This process is self-reinforcing, which means that an organism with an adaptive trait will survive and reproduce more quickly than those with a maladaptive trait. The greater an organism's fitness which is measured by its ability to reproduce and survive, is the more offspring it will produce. People with desirable traits, like longer necks in giraffes, or bright white color patterns in male peacocks, are more likely to survive and have offspring, so they will make up the majority of the population in the future.

Natural selection is only a factor in populations and not on individuals. This is a significant distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution, which states that animals acquire traits due to use or lack of use. For example, if a animal's neck is lengthened by stretching to reach for prey, its offspring will inherit a larger neck. The differences in neck size between generations will continue to increase until the giraffe is no longer able to reproduce with other giraffes.

Evolution through Genetic Drift

Genetic drift occurs when the alleles of a gene are randomly distributed in a population. At some point, one will reach fixation (become so widespread that it is unable to be removed through natural selection), while other alleles will fall to lower frequencies. In the extreme this, it leads to dominance of a single allele. The other alleles are essentially eliminated, and heterozygosity is reduced to zero. In a small number of people, this could lead to the total elimination of the recessive allele. This is known as the bottleneck effect. It is typical of the evolutionary process that occurs whenever an enormous number of individuals move to form a population.

A phenotypic 'bottleneck' can also occur when the survivors of a disaster like an outbreak or mass hunt incident are concentrated in a small area.  에볼루션 무료체험  surviving individuals will be largely homozygous for the dominant allele, meaning that they all have the same phenotype, and consequently have the same fitness characteristics. This could be caused by a war, an earthquake, or even a plague. Whatever the reason the genetically distinct group that remains is prone to genetic drift.

Walsh Lewens and Ariew utilize Lewens, Walsh, and Ariew use a "purely outcome-oriented" definition of drift as any deviation from the expected values for differences in fitness. They give the famous example of twins who are genetically identical and share the same phenotype, but one is struck by lightning and dies, whereas the other is able to reproduce.

This kind of drift can play a very important role in the evolution of an organism. However, it's not the only method to evolve. 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 huge difference between treating drift like an actual cause or force, and treating other causes such as migration and selection mutation as causes and forces. He claims that a causal-process explanation of drift lets us distinguish it from other forces, and this differentiation is crucial. He also claims that drift has a direction, that is it tends to reduce heterozygosity. It also has a size, that is determined by the size of the population.

Evolution through Lamarckism

In high school, students study biology, they are often introduced to the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829). His theory of evolution is often known as "Lamarckism" and it asserts that simple organisms evolve into more complex organisms by the inheritance of characteristics which result from an organism's natural activities, use and disuse. Lamarckism is typically illustrated with the image of a giraffe stretching its neck further to reach leaves higher up in the trees. This would result in giraffes passing on their longer necks to offspring, who then become taller.

Lamarck Lamarck, a French Zoologist, introduced an idea that was revolutionary in his 17 May 1802 opening lecture at the Museum of Natural History of Paris. He challenged traditional thinking about organic transformation. According to Lamarck, living creatures evolved from inanimate materials by a series of gradual steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest this, but he was widely considered to be the first to give the subject a comprehensive and general treatment.

The predominant story is that Charles Darwin's theory on natural selection and Lamarckism were rivals in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually prevailed and led to what biologists refer to as the Modern Synthesis. This theory denies that acquired characteristics can be inherited, and instead suggests that organisms evolve through the action of environmental factors, like natural selection.

While Lamarck endorsed the idea of inheritance through acquired characters, and his contemporaries also spoke of this idea, it was never an integral part of any of their theories about evolution. This is largely due to the fact that it was never tested scientifically.

But it is now more than 200 years since Lamarck was born and in the age genomics, there is a large amount of evidence that supports the heritability of acquired characteristics. This is sometimes called "neo-Lamarckism" or more commonly, epigenetic inheritance. This is a model that is as reliable as the popular neodarwinian model.

Evolution through adaptation

One of the most commonly-held misconceptions about evolution is its being driven by a struggle to survive. This is a false assumption and overlooks other forces that drive evolution. The fight for survival can be more effectively described as a struggle to survive within a specific environment, which may be a struggle that involves not only other organisms but also the physical environment itself.

To understand how evolution operates, it is helpful to consider what adaptation is. Adaptation refers to any particular characteristic that allows an organism to survive and reproduce within its environment. It can be a physical feature, like feathers or fur. It could also be a behavior trait, like moving into the shade during the heat, or escaping the cold at night.

The survival of an organism depends on its ability to draw energy from the environment and to interact with other living organisms and their physical surroundings. The organism must possess the right genes to produce offspring and be able find sufficient food and resources. The organism must also be able reproduce itself at the rate that is suitable for its particular niche.

These factors, along with mutation and gene flow, lead to changes in the ratio of alleles (different types of a gene) in a 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.

Many of the characteristics we appreciate in plants and animals are adaptations. For example lung or gills that extract oxygen from air feathers and fur as insulation, long legs to run away from predators, and camouflage to hide. To understand the concept of adaptation, it is important to differentiate between physiological and behavioral traits.

Physical characteristics like large gills and thick fur are physical traits. The behavioral adaptations aren't, such as the tendency of animals to seek companionship or retreat into shade in hot weather. It is important to remember that a insufficient planning does not cause an adaptation. In fact, a failure to think about the consequences of a behavior can make it unadaptable, despite the fact that it might appear reasonable or even essential.