Gracie Faver Evolution Class Blog

 Fitness and Selection Within biology, absolute fitness is the overall reproductive success of an organism throughout their lifetime, not compared to any other organisms in their population. Relative fitness, on the other hand, takes into account the fitness of the organisms around them within the population. A species of snail with no patterns on its shell could produce 100 offspring throughout its lifetime. Although this is a fairly fit snail because it was able to produce many offspring, another snail in the same area has blue spots on it and produces 130 offspring in its lifetime. This shows that the absolute fitness of the plain snail is different than its relative fitness, because relative to the snail with spots, it is not as fit.  Relative fitness of plain snail: Relative fitness of spotted snail: Initial population dynamics: Plain snails: 100 Offspring Spotted snails: 130 Offspring An increase of blue flowers in their ecosystem allows the blue spotted snails to camouf...

Natural Selection I feel like most people have heard of the phrase "Survival of the Fittest". Although the popular phrase has given great attention to an important evolutionary phenomenon, it has also lead to many misunderstandings as to  what the ideas of survival, evolution, and fitness really are.  Another phrase that could be better to describe this phenomena is "Survival of the good enough". When we hear the word "fittest", many often think of people in bodybuilding shows with one overall winner. In reality, fitness isn't always how strong you are, and it's not about being number one. As we have discussed in class, fitness can be explained by a metaphor of currency. If you are able to produce more viable and successful offspring than your peers, you would be considered more fit than them. Factors that could affect ones fitness can include their strength, but is not limited to that. It could also include how elaborate and successful one's m...

 Convergence, Natural Selection, "Survival of Fittest" From the reading in the book "Improbable Destinies" I learned that the eyeball of octopi and humans are nearly identical. Convergent evolution is when two or more distinct species share a similar trait, and do not have a common ancestor. Divergent evolution, on the other hand is where species with a common ancestor descend and develop unique traits independently. An example of this would be a dog and a wolf, or birds and bats having wings. The eyeball of the octopus and human would be an example of convergent evolution as their most common ancestor "swam the Earth more than 550 million years ago" and had no eyes. Despite octopi having 8 tentacles, living underwater, being able to change their skin pigmentation and contract their bodies to extremely small sizes, (being an entirely different species) their eyes are shockingly similar to ours, having a lens, pupil retina and iris. Both eyes also focus lig...

 Mutations and the Tree of Life      Have you ever wondered why you might have one hair color, and your friend has a different one? Or why your friend who is the basketball all star is so tall and why you might not be? We all have something called a genome, which like a code for your favorite video games, tells your body how to grow and function. In this genome, there are billions of letters that repeat over and over within your DNA that determine what color your hair is, how tall you are, and every feature that makes you, YOU! No genome is perfect however, this is where mutations come in. Mutated things are not always like what we see in TV where a regular turtle undergoes a random change and becomes a ninja. Instead, a mutation, can be just a small change to a single one of those repeating letters in your DNA. A small change to your DNA could make a major change on your body, causing cancer or an autoimmune disease, it could have zero effect whatsoever, or it could...

MYTHS & MISCONCEPTIONS One misconception about evolution is that " evolution is organisms adapting to their environment ". I chose this misconception because I think the wording and terminology surrounding evolution, adaptation, and survival can lead to some confusing understandings of the topics. It is so easy to link our knowledge of adaptation with a less familiar concept of evolution, and create such a misconception. Previously, it has been believed that a giraffe spent so much time stretching its neck to reach fruits that its children would be born with longer necks. This same thought process can be applied towards many species, even humans. Although this may seem like it would make sense, individual organisms cannot evolve. Evolution occurs at the population level. Some animals may have mutations in their genome that present a phenotype of a long or a short neck. Then, based on food availability, in an area where only tall fruits are present, the giraffes with the s...