Essays on Genetic Drift

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 ...

Corridors and Population Dispersion

Part I. Introduction and Review of Relevant Biology

1. Energy transfer becomes inefficient in higher trophic levels in a food chain. Predators utilize more energy in obtaining food than their prey. The number of organisms and the amount of biomass defines energy relationships among organisms in trophic levels. Most top predators are huge in size but their population is lower because there is not enough energy to support a large population of these predators (Odum and Barrett).

2. A population of infinite size is seen less likely to evolve since it would be almost resistant to random fluctuations within the environment. Small populations on the other hand are prone ...

Genetics has progressed over the recent years. Very sophisticated methods of studying genes and researching how species have evolved from one cell into complex animals. The purpose of the research by Lee, Lai, Malik, Saldarriaga, Kelling, and Slamovits at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University was to observe and gather more information about The Oxyrrhis marina (O. marina). The species is very good for studying about the development of two taxonomic groups of “protists, dinoflagellates and apicomplexans” (1). The molecular structure is simple, so it is at the ...

The Earth is home to an innumerable amount of plant and animal species, with any estimate ranging from 2 to 50 million being as good a guess as any. 950,000 kinds exist within the insect class alone, while annual naturalistic publications are often able to showcase up to 10,000 newly discovered species. This incredible genetic diversity is preserved by unique natural phenomena known as isolation mechanisms to prevent accidental matchups between different species. But how did so many different types of plants and animals develop in the first place? What was the driving force behind our planet’s ...

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 ...

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 ...

Different species on earth have a common ancestry despite their variations. The process through which species on earth acquire different characteristics over successive generations is referred to as evolution. It is the gradual change of inherited characteristics from one generation to another over a given period of time (Havilland et al 24). Evolutionary scientists presume that all life on earth can trace their origin from one common source but then acquired different characteristics through various evolutionary mechanisms. Evolution is described in two broad perspectives, micro and macroevolution. Macro evolution refers to changes that occur at the species level. Macroevolution occurs ...

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 ...

Genetics Exercise

Directional selection entails natural selection favoring one phenotype causing its allele frequency to shift in one direction. The constant increase in frequency of the favored allele is independent of its dominance compared to other alleles; thus, even recessive alleles can ultimately become fixed. For instance, environment pressures and changes of diet affect the size (depth) of beaks of a population of cardinals in the subsequent generations. During the rainy spells, there is a huge supply of small seeds as compared to large seeds; therefore, the cardinals seldom ate large seeds and their beaks become shorter. Throughout the dry spells, neither the ...