Origins of species (04) (evolution) Flashcards
How did Natural Selection become discovered? What started it? (2 key words)
Started it with Darwin’s publish book, called “on the origin of speices”
A piece of text that told the audience that speices HAD and evolved and it purposed observations on HOW they evolved.
->Had pieces of evidence
What was darwins overall/overarching theory? (in detail) (+ what is the result of this theory?)
Speices evolved through natural selection.
-> the idea/theory that the environment favors the reproductive sucess of certain indivduals over than others, where animals are “better suited” for the environment
–> How? “benefitial mutations” where an animal has a better chance of both SURVIVING and REPRODUCING
the result of natural selection is that the favouritable trait becomes increasingly more common within the generations that pass (because the favouritable trait helps the organisms reproduce/survive)
How are organisms better suited than others? (what does this mean/lead to?)
-> Organisms cannot infinetly reproduce (limited by number or survival, ie humans can only birth 4 babies at a time, while frogs that lay many eggs, have a low chance of all the eggs surviving)
-> therefore, within the environment there is resource competetion among the organisms, which leads to “survival of the fittest”
What is survival of the fittest? What is its real meaning in connection to evolution?
Survival of the fittest: Who can produce the most and create the most off spring that can survival (there the “fittest” for evolution)
DOES NOT mean physicially fit.
-> Example: Fast and strong lions are more likely to reproduce and survive more than slow and weak lions (which may not survive due to the lack of food) (representational to competition of resources)
Evolution and adaption? What is the connection? What is adaptation?
Adaptiation = a trait/feauture that makes and organism good for reproduction based on the environment
-> goes hand in hand because adaptations CAUSES evolution.
(An organisms adapts to the environment they are in, therefore surviving and reproducing, therefore passing down that trait)
-> All adaptiations occur as a response to the environment (changing so that we can survive better)
Biogeography and natural selection? How do these work (generally?) Provide a detail example (using birds and seeds!)
Biogeography is the geographical distrobuition of organisms, while natural selection is which organisms are the more “fit” to reproduce and survive.
This can explain evolution in remote islands, because you can generally see how the environment favours the indivduals and how the indivduals evolved from its descendants.
Birds:
-> introduced to new environment (the island) and there was only one type of species (therefore no natural preds)
-> populations grows until it reaches the food limit, with a bigger population, birds/offspring have genetic vareity therefore there are different variations of this bird (varying in size)
-> different varations of the bird + limited food supply = food compretition (with an uneven playing feild) It is the survival of the fittest, as the large birds can eat more food than the smaller birds)
-> the more fitted birds got more food, therefore the other birds begin to die off. the bigger birds reproduce, and their offspring is bigger than average because it inherited traits from its parents.
What is falsification?
-> Testing if a theory has the possibility to be proven wrong (which allows them to know if their hyptothesis is true or not)
-> ie: testing the theory of gravity, can an apple fall up? (no)
-> If darwins theories were wrong, it would be easy to find evidence!
Therefore… what are the 3 steps to evolution/the theory of evolution/ natural selection?
1) There must be varations of a trait/charateristics (Some organisms must be favoured, while others must be not favouritable)
-> Slow vs Fast, Strong vs Weak
2) Identify the favouritable traits, and EXPLAIN how this helps the organism REPRODUCE (not solely survive)
3) Explain the results, how does this contribuite to evolution? (Because this trait is favouritable and the organisms mated, offspring will receive the favouritable trait and continue to pas it on)
-> The benefitial traits and usually the most common traits.
