Amy Schaulis - Evolutional Thoughts

So far I have developed a better understanding of what is and what evolution is not. With that, I have also learned about the different concepts and theories that influence evolution as well, such as fitness, allele frequencies, heritability, and much much more. One thing that I really do appreciate about this class so far is how the professor and TA's ask us to dig deeper in our thought processes and how they push us maybe approach a situation in a different way than we would originally. As a science major, many of my classes tend to be black and white but thus far in this evolution class, I feel like I am starting to broaden my ideas and considerations to aspects I would not usually think about. My original blog post about my interpretation of evolution was that it is "a biological process where a specific species' genome alters to where that new alteration can be then passed down to future generations". In all honesty, I still stand by my original description of wh...

    Mutation rate is the frequency of mutations within a single species over a period of time. One tricky thing about mutation rates however, is that they are not constant. Mutation rates have the ability to evolve alongside the population, whether it be a slower rate or a rapidly increasing rate. Mutations are the source of variation within certain species or populations, and they give the organism the ability to better adapt to their environment and pass this improved trait to further generations. This aligns with Darwins postulate on variation,  which states that individuals of a population vary in personal traits, such as shape and size. The higher the mutation rate becomes, the more variation you will see within a population.       A factor that may cause the rate to evolve to be faster would be if a mutation was found to be advantageous, causing organisms who possess it to reproduce at a more rapid rate than those who are now at a disadvantage. T...

   Natural selection enhances adaptation for a specific organism since their traits aided in their survival and their reproductive success. When an individual then passes those trait onto further generations, making them heritable, thats where the theory of evolution can be observed and supported. I think that an important aspect of this process is that the traits are heritable. If beneficial traits only appear in one individual and those traits aren't passed on, then evolution of a species can not take place, in terms of that variant.      Another important take away of this topic is that the presences of natural selection does not necessarily always have to lead to evolutionary changes in a species. For example, often people are attracted to other people who are physically fit and give off a muscular or toned appearance. (This is not obviously everyone's preference but this is just an example!) Because being physically fit suggests that the person takes good c...

When I think of the term "fitness" I often also think of the term "natural selection". To me, when organisms of specific population have a good fitness, that means that they have a desirable attribute to their population and often they reproduce successfully and with many of their kind. For example, if there we two color of the same bug but one of the colors attracted predators more than the other, then the bug with the color that is less noticeable will have better fitness. This is due to the fact that there will be more of that color of bugs to reproduce successfully. Natural selection also ties into fitness in that if an organism is naturally selected to pass on its genes, then it also has good fitness.  Some ideas that could be used to measure the fitness of these bugs include... 1. Rate of reproduction per color 2. What are the phenotypes of the new offspring 3. The life span of each color of bug The rate of reproduction directly reflects the fitness of the two...

  One of my favorite predictions of Darwin's idea of descent with modification makes species change through time. In other words, I will be researching evidence on the theory of microevolution. Specifically, I will be looking into evidence of Drosopholas (a species of mosquito) and their loss of chromosomal diversity due to climate change.     So in this case study, scientists have observed are taking interest in how our earth's rapid global warming is changing some of the biological systems and causing them to adapt quickly in response. Ever since the 1970's the O chromosomal polymorphisms of Drosophila subobscura have been studied in concerns for the correlation between the drastic environmental changes and their adaptive genome. In only a time span of about 16 years, the Drosophila species have lost 18.3% of their chromosomal diversity. These adaptive changes have also been found in many other mosquitoes and insect like species.      ...

    Best known for his Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics , Lamarck believed that if an organism changes during its lifetime in order to adapt to its environment, those changes will be passed on to future generations. One of his most famous examples was that of how giraffes got such a long neck. He said that because giraffes often stretched their necks in order to obtain their food, their offspring and further generations adapted to these inconveniences and inherited longer necks over time.     Alive from 1744-1829, Jean Baptiste Lamarck believed that living organisms evolved in a continuous upward direction. Anywhere from small organisms, large organisms, to simple or complex forms and more. He thought that they were all moving towards perfection and that species did not die out from extinction but rather they changed into other species. Also, Lamarck believed that organisms altered their behavior in accordance with environmental changes which, in tur...

Because so much change happens during evolution, I feel like my definition of evolution also gets updated based on new concepts and ideas we have talked about thus far in this class. So far, Evolution in my own words is a biological process where a specific species' genome alters to where that new alteration can be then passed down to future generations. While a lot of people believe that evolution would always like to modify the species to better their lifestyle and survival rate, we can see that not all evolutional traits are beneficial. Some are indifferent to the species and some can be unbeneficial and potential cause the species harm. An example of an indifferent evolutional trait is the purpose of our appendix. I'm not sure what is (or if there ever was) a purpose for the human race to develop these tissues but somewhere along the line, we did even though there is no current useful purpose for it. Also, I think it's important to include that for many species, the evo...

Hello!! My name is Amy Schaulis and I am from Salina Kansas. I graduated high school from Salina South in 2018 and am now currently a junior here at Kansas State. A topic that I am most passionate about is dentistry. I have worked as a dental assistant for 6 years and am obtaining a Life Sciences degree in hopes of one day going to dental school. I am also very passionate about volunteer work and my dog, Chloe. I think it's really fascinating that mutations can cause beneficial changes for different organisms that then are carried onto further generations over time. I feel like we often think that mutations are a bad thing but in some cases, they actually help the individual! I also find it really cool how everything in our body works together from specialized cells to proteins to hormones and so on. Especially now, I think that evolution applies to our daily lives since the covid virus is said to be evolving and changing since when it was first discovered roughly a year ago. From ...