Week 1: Intro to Natural Selection + Anthropogenic Evolution Flashcards
What is Darwin’s descent with modification?
Mutations change phenotype which may change fitness.
What is fitness?
relative survival rates and reproductive success
What is natural selection fundamental for?
Natural selection is fundamental to major transitions - ie. evolution of prokaryotic cell, eukaryotic cell and multicellularity.
What is artificial selection?
Human-directed selective breeding is artificial selection - done crops. Counterpart to natural selection
What is anthropogenic evolution?
Evolutionary change due to human activity
Why is evolution important? (3 reasons)
- Biodiversity
- Artificial Selection
- Pathogens/health (natural selection)
What are empirical approaches? Two categories? Example?
Importance of empirical hypothesis testing
Two categories: observations or manipulations.
ie. Redi’s flies/maggots/meat spontaneous generation experiment.
What are theoretical approaches?
Involves use of mathematical models to make predictions and inferences
What is Lamarck’s theory of evolution?
Outlined the inheritance of acquired characteristics - during lifetime of organism, the habits of it bring about structural changes passed down across generations.
What is spontaneous generation?
Medieval Europeans believed mice were generated from moldy grains.
Francesco Redi did experiment with rotting meat and flies to see where maggots come from.
What are Darwin’s two great laws?
1) environment selects on trait variation based on fitness (natural selection) 2) is a common ancestor of every living thing → species descend from preexisting ones.
How did he describe means of modification?
Wrote about domestication programs - specifically pigeon breeding.
Explained artificial selection in pigeons as well as how species change: permanent varieties, subspecies, species, and incipient species (those in the making).
Introduced descent with modification → resulting from natural (or artificial) selection
What is natural selection?
Is gradual but powerful, acts on small differences between individuals this translates into large changes. Works on overall reproductive success.
What are differences between natural and artificial selection?
Differences between natural and artificial: 1. Selective agent 2. Traits being selected.
What was the transformational process vs. variational process?
Before Darwin, scientists saw change as transformational process - every member changes. Lamarck’s theory was a transformational - changes in each member undergoes change and passes it down. Darwin’s theory is a variational process - the action of some process sorting on preexisting variable within the ensemble.
