It's The Complete List Of Free Evolution Dos And Don'ts

What is Free Evolution?

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

Numerous examples have been offered of this, including different kinds of stickleback fish that can live in fresh or salt water and walking stick insect varieties that are attracted to specific host plants. These mostly reversible traits permutations cannot explain fundamental changes to basic body plans.

Evolution through Natural Selection

The evolution of the myriad living creatures on Earth is a mystery that has fascinated scientists for decades. The best-established explanation is Charles Darwin's natural selection, an evolutionary process that is triggered when more well-adapted individuals live longer and reproduce more successfully than those that are less well adapted. Over time, the population of well-adapted individuals becomes larger and eventually forms a new species.

Natural selection is an ongoing process that is characterized by the interaction of three factors that are inheritance, variation and reproduction. Sexual reproduction and mutations increase genetic diversity in the species. Inheritance refers the transmission of a person's genetic characteristics, which includes recessive and dominant genes, to their offspring. Reproduction is the production of fertile, viable offspring which includes both sexual and asexual methods.

All of these factors have to be in equilibrium to allow natural selection to take place. For example when a dominant allele at the gene allows an organism to live and reproduce more often than the recessive one, the dominant allele will become more prevalent in the population. If the allele confers a negative survival advantage or decreases the fertility of the population, it will disappear. This process is self-reinforcing meaning that an organism with an adaptive trait will live and reproduce much more than those with a maladaptive trait. The more fit an organism is as measured by its capacity to reproduce and endure, is the higher number of offspring it will produce. Individuals with favorable characteristics, like having a longer neck in giraffes, or bright white colors in male peacocks are more likely to survive and have offspring, which means they will make up the majority of the population in the future.

Natural selection only acts on populations, not on individuals. This is a crucial distinction from the Lamarckian evolution theory that states that animals acquire traits due to usage or inaction. If a giraffe extends its neck to catch prey and its neck gets longer, then the offspring will inherit this trait. The length difference between generations will persist until the neck of the giraffe becomes too long that it can no longer breed with other giraffes.

Evolution through Genetic Drift

Genetic drift occurs when alleles from one gene are distributed randomly in a population. In the end, only one will be fixed (become common enough that it can no longer be eliminated by natural selection), and the rest of the alleles will diminish in frequency. This can lead to dominance in extreme. The other alleles have been virtually eliminated and heterozygosity been reduced to a minimum. In a small number of people, this could result in the complete elimination the recessive gene. This scenario is known as a bottleneck effect and it is typical of evolutionary process when a large number of individuals move to form a new group.

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 survivors are likely to be homozygous for the dominant allele which means they will all have the same phenotype and consequently have the same fitness traits. This may be caused by a war, an earthquake, or even a plague. The genetically distinct population, if left, could be susceptible to genetic drift.

Walsh Lewens, Walsh and Ariew define drift as a deviation from the expected values due to differences in fitness. They provide the famous case of twins who are both genetically identical and share the same phenotype. However, one is struck by lightning and dies, while the other lives to reproduce.

This kind of drift can play a crucial role in the evolution of an organism. It's not the only method for evolution. The main alternative is a process known as natural selection, where the phenotypic variation of the population is maintained through mutation and migration.

Stephens asserts that there is a vast distinction between treating drift as a force or cause, and treating other causes such as migration and selection mutation as forces and causes. He argues that a causal mechanism account of drift permits us to differentiate it from these other forces, and that this distinction is essential. He further argues that drift has a direction, that is it tends to reduce heterozygosity. It also has a size, which is determined by the size of population.

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, also referred to as "Lamarckism, states that simple organisms transform into more complex organisms adopting traits that result from the use and abuse of an organism. Lamarckism can be illustrated by an giraffe's neck stretching to reach higher leaves in the trees.  click through the next site  could cause the longer necks of giraffes to be passed onto their offspring who would then grow even taller.

Lamarck, a French Zoologist from France, presented an innovative idea in his 17 May 1802 opening lecture at the Museum of Natural History of Paris. He challenged previous thinking on organic transformation. According to him, living things had evolved from inanimate matter via the gradual progression of events. Lamarck was not the first to suggest this however he was widely considered to be the first to provide the subject a comprehensive and general overview.

The prevailing story is that Lamarckism became an opponent to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and both theories battled it out in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually prevailed and led to the development of what biologists call the Modern Synthesis. The Modern Synthesis theory denies that acquired characteristics can be acquired through inheritance and instead, it argues that organisms develop through the action of environmental factors, such as natural selection.

While Lamarck endorsed the idea of inheritance by acquired characters, and his contemporaries also paid lip-service to this notion, it was never an integral part of any of their evolutionary theorizing. This is partly because it was never tested scientifically.

But it is now more than 200 years since Lamarck was born and in the age of genomics there is a vast body of evidence supporting the possibility of inheritance of acquired traits. This is referred to as "neo Lamarckism", or more generally epigenetic inheritance. This is a variant that is as valid as the popular neodarwinian model.

Evolution through the process of adaptation

One of the most commonly-held misconceptions about evolution is being driven by a struggle for survival. In fact, this view misrepresents natural selection and ignores the other forces that determine the rate of evolution. The fight for survival is more accurately described as a struggle to survive in a specific environment. This can be a challenge for not just other living things but also the physical environment itself.

To understand how evolution operates it is beneficial to consider what adaptation is. It refers to a specific characteristic that allows an organism to survive and reproduce in its environment. It could be a physical structure, like fur or feathers. It could also be a characteristic of behavior such as moving towards shade during the heat, or escaping the cold at night.

The capacity of an organism to draw energy from its surroundings and interact with other organisms as well as their physical environments, is crucial to its survival. The organism should possess the right genes for producing offspring and to be able to access enough food and resources. The organism must also be able reproduce itself at a rate that is optimal for its specific niche.

These factors, together with mutations and gene flow, can lead to changes in the proportion of different alleles in a population’s gene pool. As time passes, this shift in allele frequencies could lead to the emergence of new traits and ultimately new species.

A lot of the traits we admire in animals and plants are adaptations. For instance lung or gills that extract oxygen from the air feathers and fur for insulation long legs to run away from predators and camouflage to conceal. However,  Going In this article  of adaptation requires a keen eye to the distinction between physiological and behavioral characteristics.

Physiological adaptations, like thick fur or gills, are physical traits, while behavioral adaptations, such as the tendency to seek out companions or to move into the shade in hot weather, are not. It is also important to note that the absence of planning doesn't result in an adaptation. In fact, failing to think about the consequences of a decision can render it unadaptive even though it appears to be sensible or even necessary.