Evolution 4133 Blog

 

 Hardy Weinberg may not consider a lot of things evolution, but the equation that goes along with this theory is helpful. HWE includes an equilibrium that allows us to determine homozygous and heterozygous alleles in a population. This equilibrium equation is useful,  however HWE does not believe in selection, mutations, migration, and large populations. 

Genetics was always so confusing to me, even in high school . I dreaded learning about genetics and never fully sat down to study it until last semester. One of the favorite discontinuous variations is the detached or attached earlobes! It is crazy that one our genotypes are what make us so unique and give us such distinct features. Another amazing feature is codominance, specifically blood types. Blood types were never a specialty of mine but after genetics I am able to understand how this works and what blood types the child will take. It is crazy how we learn so much just from blood and how we can predict their blood types! I still struggle to understand the genetic ratio trees, not necessarily the simple ones but the complex ones give me a headache. When we learned about these things in genetics, I hated the ratio questions. I hated them so much, I would take an L on some homework problems and quiz questions.

  I learned about altruism and kin selection in ecology and enjoy learning how this comes hand in hand with evolution. Altruism is a behavior that increases the survival and reproduction of a species but can also do damage to the recipient as well. The more they attempt to increase the survival of their own by having these warning signs, the more susceptible they are to death. Kin selection , according to Hamilton's equation, is the relatedness to help pass on your own genes. I believe that these two do go hand in hand because they both require help from one another to survive. The species want to pass on their best genes and put their own self at danger to continue fitness. An example of these going hand in hand would be the worker bees, defending their hive to allow the queen to continue reproducing!

  I am choosing to describe the soapberry rapid evolution because I love (almost) all insects.  These small bugs go under amazing changes in just a little amount of time. When we think about adaptations, we might think about the snake jaw which is a part of macroevolution. Their jaw formation and function took much longer than the microevolution the soapberry bugs go through. In lecture Dr. Wiggins first began with the soapberry eating the large seed pods. The bugs had to have a long beak to be able to survive and continue to eat. Over time, the large seed pods were invaded with small seed pods. The small seed pods were an invasive species, forcing the soap bugs to adapt to the new small plant to survive. This happened fast in less than 50 years.  They have evolved again into the long beaks due to the large seed pods making a return. These soapberry bugs are required to change in order to be able to continue surviving and producing more offspring.

  Horizontal gene transfers was the most surprising and new form of variation to me. It is crazy to think that once simple gene that is passed from another organism else can create a new organism.  Normally, genes are transferred from the organism family, for example parent to offspring. In horizontal gene it comes from the same generation. For example, the bacteria example of horizontal gene transfer in the video demonstrated how genes can transfer from one organism to the other in the same generation.  A bacteria may touch another bacteria and transfer information/material. The bacteria that picked up the new gene may die and release the gene leading to other bacteria to pick up the gene.  

  Today we are learning about evolution, Have you guys heard of a phylogenetic tree? No? Let me break this down A phylogenetic tree is like a family tree, remember in elementary when you would make a family tree with pictures of all of your family members? The phylogenetic tree is similar, it is an evolutionary  “family tree” with all sorts of species, a visual representation of what organisms are closely related and where they came from. We use these trees to separate features of all kinds of organisms found on planet earth, which in the end makes it easier for us scientist to understand where everything started.