Essays on Gene Flow

Different cultures have developed different mythologies and creation stories that try to explain the origin of humans. Similarly, scientists have established the processes of evolution that provide an explanation of the same. However, evolution is different from the mythologies and creation stories in which it is based on the scientific language. Another difference between the creation stories and evolution is that evolution is grounded in the ideas that can be tested. According to Chapter 2, Evolution can be termed as the scientific way to depict how the species appear and change over time. To provide a clear understanding of ...

Evolution is the scientific way of explaining how species come into existence and how they change over time. Evolution is also a mythology which explains the origin of human beings. Most of the evidence for evolution, which come as a result of historical and cultural processes contributes to scientific thought, hence making the scientists accept evolution as a fact. The process of evolution has many areas of discussion, for example, the four forces of evolution, the concepts of species and population, variation, isolation mechanisms, and speciation. This paper explains the concepts one by one in details. There were different ...

Evolution is the process by which organisms undergo various changes over time. The change occurs in the physical and behavioral aspects of the organism. There are fundamental processes or concepts in the process of evolution. This paper discusses these concepts in details.

Species, Population and Variation

Species refers to a group of individuals, which naturally interbreed to give rise to offspring. Organisms, which belong to the same species, are referred to as a population. Members of a particular population can have different biological compositions or genetics. This mechanism is referred to as variation and is mostly caused by genetic drift.

The Four Forces of Evolution

The evolution process ...

Nursing:

Purpose The aim of the lab was to investigate what happens when a natural physical barrier suddenly splits a species within a given population.

Introduction

A species is a group of organisms within a population that can interbreed under natural conditions to produce fertile and viable offspring (The University of Miami, n.d.). In this context, a species exhibits reproductive isolation, in which physical and behavioral traits allow them to reproduce only with organisms that possess similar traits (Howard & Berlocher, 1998). Speciation describes how new sets of species are created and occurs when a group of organisms within a species separates ...

Exam #1 (50 points)

1a ) Natural selection is the process by which adaptive traits of species increases through generations. In Cadotte’s research, he had several combinations of the 17 kinds of plots and he found out that those which had the most variation, survived the most. These were the plants with the most distance from each other. The adaptive traits of these plants were inherited by its offspring. Since the plants with traits that survived the most produced more offspring then these were the ones that flourished the most. The reason, Codette explained was that these plants had different needs therefore they ...

Abstract

Theory of evolution as proposed by Darwin has for long hinged on the fossil records to prove the process of evolution. However, the prevalent gaps in the fossils led way to the development of the punctuated equilibrium theory that was proposed by Eldredge and Gould as an alternative to Darwin’s phyletic gradualism theory. The punctuated equilibrium postulated that speciation occurs in an isolated peripheral subsect of population as a rapid change after a period of stasis. Unlike the anagenetic speciation of phyletic gradualism, punctuated equilibrium promotes the concept of cladogenetic speciation. However, punctuated equilibrium does consider rapid anagenetic speciation as a ...

1) Humanity is a vastly diverse species, and there is a range of ways of viewing it. The world anthropology is the study of every facet of what it means to be human. As a result, there are a number of perspectives and applications that humanity inhabits, and as a result a number of subdivisions to the academic discipline of anthropology. Depending on who you ask, anthropology is generally broken into five categories, while the majority of anthropologists recognize four areas of anthropology (Kottak, 1). A quick look at these subdivisions shows how they are all related to understanding humanity, but from different points ...

- (6 pt.) Describe the effects harvest, disturbance, and nutrient enrichment by humans have had on other wild populations. Be sure to explain how these activities act as selective agents and what the most-fit phenotype will be under these circumstances. Human activities have emerged to be the most precarious and dreadful to the wild population. Notably, human interfere with biodiversity and wild population in a number of ways. Overharvesting includes activities such as target haunting, gathering or fishing for a particular species. Overharvesting has been associated with extinction of some species of organisms. For example, advancement in technology after the ...

Neanderthals are the members of the genus Homo and are known extinct relatives of Homo sapiens. A large amount of fossils and other archives have been collected that has substantiated the presence of these mysterious beings. The first skeletal fossils of Neanderthals were discovered in Germany in 1856, in the Neander Valley, where a group of quarrymen found 16 bone pieces including a skull, which they thought to be a bear. The bones were analyzed to determine that the fossils belonged to ancient relatives of humans. It has been close to 150 years since the accidental discovery of Neanderthals, however, scientists are ...

Introduction

Dissimilarities and similarities among different groups of organisms are the result evolution. This change occurs in the characteristics of different biological populations with the passage of time. The four forces of evolution result in speciation. Speciation is the process in evolution through which new species arise. It could result from any of the four forces of evolution. These are genetic drift, mutation, gene flow, and selection. They lead to slight changes in existing species, as well as the formation of new species.

Mutations

This is the main source of evolutionary change. It occurs randomly, when mistakes take place in copying ...

Exam questions

Anthropology refers to the study of human society, human nature, and human past. Therefore, it is essentially a scholarly discipline, which aims to give a description of what it means to be a human. This discipline is holistic meaning that its primary goal is to study the human kind as a whole, comparative meaning that comparative methods are employed in the study of the human behavior structure and development, field based, as well as evolutionary. Anthropology is traditionally divided into 4 fields that include cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology. It is worth noting that all these fields are united ...

This paper briefly discusses several concepts pertaining to evolution, particularly the four forces of evolution. Although Charles Darwin and his Origin of the Species published in 1859 has been the most popularly known work about the theory of evolution, Russell Wallace and Carolus Linnaues had earlier discoveries that contributed to the development of the theory of evolution (Grolier, 159). Evolution is “the process by which all living things have developed from primitive organisms through changes occurring over billions of years” (Grolier, 159). There are four forces responsible for evolution. According to Prins, Walrath, & McBride (27), these are gene ...

Evolution is a very slow process where change in a genetic composition occurs over a long period of time. Micro evolutionary changes which are essential for creation of a new species also happen after a long period of time. These changes are small but observable. (Hariland, Walrath, Prins & McBride ,2010|) Therefore, microevolution refers to the changes within a gene collection that takes place from one generation to another. Frequency of alleles in a given population may change due to the following fundamental factors also referred to as fundamental forces: gene flow, natural selection, generic drift and mutation. It is used as the basic unit of classification ...

Microevolution refers to the change that occurs in allele frequencies as a result of natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift and mutation. Macroevolution on the other hand refers to trends, big-scale patterns and change rates in families and other more overall species’ groups. A species refers to a group of organisms that are able to interbreed giving rise to viable offspring. A population refers to organisms of the same species that have interbred and live at the same geographical location at the same time. There are four forces that influence micro to macro evolution. These include; mutation, selection, genetic drift ...

Introduction

Evolution is a very interesting concept in anthropology. It refers to the biological populations’ alteration of the inherited characteristics over successive generations. The processes in evolution bring diversity at each biological organization level including, individual organisms, molecules like proteins and DNA, and species. According to what we know, life on this universe actually originated and afterwards evolved from universal common ancestor. Perhaps this is what makes the subject of evolution appear more interesting since through it we get well informed about where we originated from and about our evolution. The concept of evolution is basically categorized under both micro ...

Abstract

Genetically modified organisms have large impact on our environment. Although there is not much proved evidence against it but still the amount of evidence available is enough to discuss it with its implications. GMO crops affect nearly crops by gene follow which could be minimized to some extant will the help of designing separate places for different crops. GMO also effect natural cycle of nitrogen and Carbone reproduction. GMO crops could be a risk in long time that it could alter some properties in human DNA. Steps should be taken by government and other organizations to minimize its effects to ...

Introduction

At the dawn of the 20th century, researchers and scientists have developed another approach in the process of evolution called the synthetic theory of evolution. This theory emphasizes on microevolution stipulating that the population had very little genetic change during the past generations. Paleontologist like Stephen J. Gould believes that some fossil evidence suggested that some species remained the same for several million years (anthro.palomar.edu). However, the Darwinian idea contradicts the theory and suggests a natural consequence of macroevolution, which is the slow progress of genetic change on species at a less steady rate. These ideas were created based on the ...

Introduction

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution may have been controversial, but it has survived to the present. His ideas on how living things have evolved through generations is still being subscribed to by modern scientists to explain how things came to be and how these will continue to exist centuries from now. The following paragraphs will describe several key terms in evolution and discuss how these concepts relate with each other.

Concepts and Processes

Species is “the smallest working units in biological classification; reproductively isolated populations or groups of populations capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring” ( Haviland, et al. 33). The ...

When studying the process of evolution, it is important to understand the basic concepts and, what is very important, the way these concepts are interrelated. It helps not just to learn how the evolution was progressing, but this knowledge will also create a strong basis for understanding this important and interesting science. This paper will focus on explaining the concepts of species, population, the Four Forces, variation, isolating mechanisms, and speciation. In evolution species means such a lineage of organisms, in which genes are shared, maintaining integrity in relation to other lineages in space and time. At some point of time ...

Species

A species is a group organisms that have a similar origin and can interbreed. This refers to individuals that may look seemingly different but have the ability to interbreed and bring forth young ones. By having the ability to interbreed, this implies that the organs of the individuals are compatible and have the ability of mating and producing. This may result in a new breed, which will have a combination of both features from the parent individuals. When we talk of human as a species, it implies that two humans from different races have the ability of mating and bringing forth a young one that ...

Evolution is the progressive alteration in the inherited features of a biological population. The progressive change, gives rise to diversity at the various stages of biological organization, these stages are namely molecules, species and individual organisms. A biological population is a group of organisms that share a common gene pool, hence they can interbreed between each other, and they live in the same geographical area (Karleskint et al. 25). A gene pool is sum total genetic information on any population of a specific species while, species is a group of organisms that can interbreed to produce a fertile offspring (Brock 13). Macroevolution is the ...

Microevolution is the way in which individual traits change overtime within a certain population. For a population to revolutionize, some things must just be assumed to be true. In simple terms, there must be some processes involved that in the long run will cause microevolution. Microevolution mainly occurs due to the presence variations. Variations among individuals normally take place in what is referred to as the gene pool of the population. Genetic pool is the compilation of the genetic information of all individuals within a certain population. No two individuals in a population have the similar blend of genes, some genes may be ...

Introduction

According to Frankham, Ballou and Briscoe (2009), conservation genetics is a basic and applied science that deals with molecular biology, ecology, mathematical modeling and construction of family relationships. For scientists to apply management techniques, they must understand the genetic relationships that exist between the different organisms under study. In addition, the organisms being studied are usually endangered species. Endangered species are those species that are at a high danger of instant extinction (Frankham, Ballou &Briscoe, 2009).

Causes of Extinction

Most extinction results from human factors (Frankham, Ballou &Briscoe, 2009). Over the previous century, the human population has grown exponentially. This has resulted to adverse ...

According to the World Food Programme (2012), almost 870 million people do not have the capacity to eat enough, majority of them living in developing countries. At least 564 million of the world’s hungry people currently reside in Asia or Oceania. In terms of gender, women comprise 60% of the entire number of the world’s hungry. Children have also been a victim of hunger around the globe as it fostered malnutrition and under nutrition, killing five million kids under the age of five from developing nations (World Food Programme, 2012). There have been proposals that most of the ...