Why Free Evolution Should Be Your Next Big Obsession

What is Free Evolution?

Free evolution is the notion that the natural processes of organisms can lead them to evolve over time. This includes the emergence and development of new species.

This has been proven by many examples such as the stickleback fish species that can thrive in salt or fresh water, and walking stick insect types that are apprehensive about specific host plants. These are mostly reversible traits can't, however, explain fundamental changes in body plans.

Evolution through Natural Selection

Scientists have been fascinated by the development of all the living creatures that inhabit our planet for centuries. Charles Darwin's natural selectivity is the most well-known explanation. This process occurs when individuals who are better-adapted have more success in reproduction and survival than those who are less well-adapted. As time passes, a group of well adapted individuals grows and eventually becomes a new species.

Natural selection is an ongoing process that involves the interaction of three factors: variation, inheritance and reproduction. Variation is caused by mutation and sexual reproduction, both of which increase the genetic diversity of an animal species. Inheritance is the transfer of a person's genetic characteristics to the offspring of that person which includes both recessive and 무료 에볼루션 dominant alleles. Reproduction is the process of generating fertile, viable offspring. This can be accomplished via sexual or asexual methods.

All of these factors must be in harmony to allow natural selection to take place. For example the case where an allele that is dominant at the gene allows an organism to live and reproduce more frequently than the recessive allele the dominant allele will be more prevalent in the population. If the allele confers a negative advantage to survival or decreases the fertility of the population, it will go away. The process is self reinforcing meaning that an organism with an adaptive characteristic will live and reproduce more quickly than one with a maladaptive characteristic. The more fit an organism is as measured by its capacity to reproduce and survive, is the more offspring it produces. Individuals with favorable characteristics, such as the long neck of giraffes, or bright white color patterns on male peacocks are more likely than others to reproduce and survive and eventually lead to them becoming the majority.

Natural selection is only a force for populations, not individual organisms. This is an important distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution, which claims that animals acquire traits through use or neglect. If a giraffe stretches its neck to catch prey and its neck gets longer, then the children will inherit this characteristic. The difference in neck length between generations will persist until the neck of the giraffe becomes too long to not breed with other giraffes.

Evolution by Genetic Drift

Genetic drift occurs when alleles from a gene are randomly distributed within a population. Eventually, one of them will attain fixation (become so widespread that it can no longer be eliminated through natural selection), while the other alleles drop to lower frequency. This could lead to an allele that is dominant in extreme. The other alleles are basically eliminated and heterozygosity has decreased to a minimum. In a small population, this could result in the complete elimination of the recessive gene. This scenario is called the bottleneck effect and is typical of the evolutionary process that occurs when a large number individuals migrate to form a population.

A phenotypic 'bottleneck' can also occur when the survivors of a disaster such as an outbreak or a mass hunting incident are concentrated in an area of a limited size. The remaining individuals will be mostly homozygous for the dominant allele, meaning that they all share the same phenotype, and therefore have the same fitness characteristics. This may be the result of a conflict, 에볼루션게이밍 earthquake or even a disease. The genetically distinct population, if left vulnerable to genetic drift.

Walsh, Lewens and Ariew define drift as a deviation from expected values due to differences in fitness. They give a famous example of twins that are genetically identical, have identical phenotypes, but one is struck by lightning and dies, 에볼루션 while the other lives and reproduces.

This type of drift can play a crucial part in the evolution of an organism. This isn't the only method for evolution. The main alternative is a process known as natural selection, in which the phenotypic diversity of a population is maintained by mutation and migration.

Stephens argues there is a huge distinction between treating drift as an actual cause or force, and treating other causes like migration and selection as causes and forces. He claims that a causal process account of drift allows us to distinguish it from the other forces, 에볼루션 룰렛 and this distinction is vital. He argues further that drift is both an orientation, i.e., it tends towards eliminating heterozygosity. It also has a size which is determined by population size.

Evolution by Lamarckism

When students in high school study biology, they are often introduced to the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829). His theory of evolution, commonly called "Lamarckism which means that simple organisms evolve into more complex organisms inheriting characteristics that result from the organism's use and misuse. Lamarckism is usually illustrated with the image of a giraffe that extends its neck to reach the higher branches in the trees. This process would result in giraffes passing on their longer necks to their offspring, which then grow even taller.

Lamarck was a French zoologist and, in his inaugural lecture for his course on invertebrate zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris on the 17th May 1802, he introduced an innovative concept that completely challenged the previous understanding of organic transformation. In his view living things had evolved from inanimate matter through the gradual progression of events. Lamarck was not the only one to suggest that this might be the case but the general consensus is that he was the one having given the subject its first broad and thorough treatment.

The predominant story is that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection and Lamarckism fought in the 19th century. Darwinism ultimately won which led to what biologists call the Modern Synthesis. The theory argues the possibility that acquired traits can be inherited and instead argues that organisms evolve through the action of environmental factors, including natural selection.

Although Lamarck believed in the concept of inheritance by acquired characters and his contemporaries spoke of this idea, it was never a central element in any of their evolutionary theories. This is partly because it was never scientifically validated.

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

Evolution through Adaptation

One of the most popular misconceptions about evolution is being driven by a struggle to survive. This view misrepresents natural selection and ignores the other forces that determine the rate of evolution. The fight for survival is better described as a struggle to survive in a specific environment. This could include not just other organisms as well as the physical surroundings themselves.

Understanding adaptation is important to understand evolution. Adaptation refers to any particular feature that allows an organism to survive and reproduce within its environment. It could be a physiological structure, such as fur or feathers or a behavior, such as moving into the shade in hot weather or coming out at night to avoid cold.

The ability of an organism to extract energy from its surroundings and interact with other organisms and their physical environment, is crucial to its survival. The organism should possess the right genes for producing offspring, and be able to find sufficient food and resources. Moreover, the organism must be capable of reproducing at a high rate within its niche.

These factors, together with gene flow and mutation result in an alteration in the percentage of alleles (different varieties of a particular gene) in the gene pool of a population. As time passes, this shift in allele frequency can lead to the emergence of new traits and eventually new species.

A lot of the traits we appreciate in plants and animals are adaptations. For example the lungs or gills which extract oxygen from air, fur and feathers as insulation long legs to run away from predators, and camouflage to hide. To understand the concept of adaptation it is essential to distinguish between behavioral and physiological traits.

Physiological adaptations, such as the thick fur or gills are physical traits, whereas behavioral adaptations, such as the tendency to seek out companions or to retreat to shade in hot weather, aren't. It is also important to remember that a lack of planning does not result in an adaptation. Failure to consider the effects of a behavior, even if it appears to be rational, could make it inflexible.