Biological Evolution - Final Ideas and Questions

[Erin Nash]

Use the space below to record your final learning about evolution. How has your learning changed? Compare your current understanding of evolution to your original post. What information do you feel you understand better as a result of our class discussions. What do you still not understand? 

Your first step today will be examining your notes - look through the packet to make sure you thoroughly understand the information in the packet.

Next you will want to include your question you had researched for today's class period. What was your question? What did you learn from this question? What resources did you use to answer this?

Think about your learning from our class notes, as well as the videos and audio excerpts you listened to in class. How has your view of evolution changed?

If you are still finding you are not understanding some concepts regarding evolution, this site is very helpful in regard to providing information regarding this scientific theory.

[Erin Nash]

Terra,
If you read the article we read today a little closer - it actually gives an example of "recent" human evolution. Recent if you consider the human/Neanderthal split to be recent.

[Ali Bargu]

Evolution - The Process of Changing Populations NOT Individuals

So after studying evolution in its way clearer to me to me. First of all I came to realize that the topic is not as controversial as everybody wants it to be. It is really EASY to combine religion and Science in this case, the only thing you have to do is actually listen and understand.

This picture is showing the diverstiy and how maybe scientist have more theories and proofs for what they say, but that you CAN put it on the same balance. Natural selection is together with mutation the two biggest reasons why evolution is happening.

Natural selection is the process of the environment and mostly the females choosing their mate that will carry on their genes into the next generation. There are a lot of factors that have to be included into natural selection.

[Ali Bargu]

The next topic that we were talking about was something of the berkeley home page. After doing 2 Projects on evolution I felt my understanding just tripled. Evolution works quite different from what I thought the principles are behind it.

Lamarck and Darwin had different theories at different times. Both of them were outstanding with looking at different topics and drawing conclusions. Even though Lamarck's theories are now not the most accurate and scientifically proven anymore. He thought that we acquire traits and a trait that we use is getting improved. That is not real...

Darwins theory is talking about the survival of the fittest. The person with a trait that is slightly better in comparison to the other one, is going to survive and have offsprings that are probably are going to have the same trait. With surviving of the "fitter" ones this particular trait gets increased in efficiency. This does NOT happen during one generations. It takes a long, time and a high number of generations.

The survival of the sneakiest talked about how not every time the individual with the best version of one trait is surviving. There are individuals that manage to be "sneaky" and bring their DNA into the next generation.

My Question that I had is "How come so many animals (including humans), have so close related organs? Specific: How come you can take a pigs heart and transplant it in a human? Does that mean we come from the same ancestor?

After reading several really controversial articles, i come to the conclusion there must be something common in our history. There is NO WAY that we evolved completely separately and ended up with almost the same eye and the same heart. WAY TO COMPLEX TO BE JUST AN INCIDENT!... I have to research more to come to a complete answer... Maybe Mr.Nash can help me???

[Ivory Baldwin]

The question I was wondering about was; do the females always choose their mates or do the males choose the females to. I know like with birds the males are colorful and the females are a neutral color and the females choose the more attractive males. As my research went on in class I found that almost every source I found said that the female choose the mate. The examples I seen were crabs, bears, birds and seals. The males have certain traits that make them a good mate such as their physical appearance. In some species the bigger the claw on a crab the more the attractive they are and that’s what the female wants.

I used five different sources to answer my question. On The Royal Society it says “Females are usually the more selective sex in mate selection, because of the higher reproductive investment of females than males”. This statement alone, answer my question. They use the word USUALLY which means that in some cases the male chooses the mate. On the website the Current debate on Cooperative Games and Sexual Selection it says, “Since for biological reasons females are the choosy sex,” This website says that only females choose the mate. The difference between these two website is that the Royal Society is getting a little more into detail than the Current debate on Cooperative Games and Sexual Selection does.

One thing I found interesting not while I was researching but when we were have a discussing in class over sexual selection was how the females are not very attractive while the males are way more attractive. Take the cardinal for example the Males are Pretty and Bright Red while the female is a brownish color. The male needs to look attractive though so that the female will want to mate with them. If the male is not very attractive and in top shape the female will probably not choose the male because they might not have good genes that she wants for her off springs.

After this unit over evolution I learned a lot. Even though I had learned a little about evolution my freshman year I didn’t remember very much. I still believed the monkey theory, which many people do but it’s actually a misconception about evolution. But after learning about Lamarck’s and Darwin I now know way more than I have ever known about evolution. It’s actually very interesting to me.

[Kylie Warner]

Looking back on the beginning of this unit, I couldn't write anything really. Every since I could remember there was and still is a lot of controversy about evolution. The propaganda in the news and also in church has always left me biased against it. But after all the class periods and notes I can see that I had everything all wrong about evolution and I had pretty much no idea what evolution what it was. It's good to see that Lamark's theory actually really never said anything about humans coming monkeys. And it makes since that what you don't use, you're not going to have anymore. I think what really helped understand this was the picture and the theory of how giraffes got to have such long necks. Those that used theirs the most to get food higher up, then they eventually evolved to have long necks. But one question that I still have is the relationship between the Darwin theory and Lamark's theory. Darwin's theory is survival of the fittest. So the giraffes that didn't use their long necks or didn't have them to begin with would eventually die off because the others were taking food and able to get more food. So Darwin's theory in a way, ties in with Lamark's.

My question was: Do animals mate for life? I found that not all animals mate for life but many do like apes, wolves, geese, and eagles. So then I wanted to know if most species don't mate for life, then what DO they do after they're done with one partner? I could never find an answer about species in general but I found that many animals just keep moving around from mate to mate. Lions for example mate every 15 to 20 minutes during a females receptive period, which can last from 3 days to a week. (Crazy, I know) But then there are some species who kill after mating. The females prey mantis just bites the males' head off when they have mated!

[Taylor Woodruff]

My knowledge on evolution has expanded A LOT since we started this lesson. Honestly, the only thing I knew about evolution was that it's a change of genetic information over a long period of time. But, as our class got more in depth about what evolution is, I learned there's a lot more to it than just genetic information changing over a long period of time. I mean, something does have to happen in order for evolution can occur. Before I didn't really think about that, I kind of just figured something wasn't needed so a population would realize they didn't need it and eventually get rid of it.

But, as our class started talking more about it, I learned about natural selection. This was the point where the theory of evolution actually started making sense to me! Think about it...for a lot of species the female just has to look at their mate to see if they are the right choice for them. Take the horse for instance, scientist found fossils of horses from a long time ago proving that horses used to be a lot smaller than they are currently. So, as you can tell from this picture slowly, overtime the horses started to get bigger. Which means the female horses chose the stronger, bigger horses to mate with so their offspring would have a better chance of survival. All of this leads to more and more horses getting the gene that makes them stronger and bigger. That made everything crystal clear to me!

So, when we started talking about natural selection, our class discussed what else attracts us to each other. We said everything from looks to eventually love. But, my question was.. does smell have an effect on who we are attracted to? When I started my search I found this interview with Dr. Herz ( a world renowned expert on the psychology of smell). It was pretty interesting to find out that we associate how we feel with smell. Like, the scent of chocolate and flowers are "romantic smells" so when we smell these things we automatically think of love and romance.

Also, in her interview she talked about pheromones and how there really isn't any evidence that we are affected by these chemicals in any other way besides maybe menstrual synchrony. So, I decided to look up "pheromone" on widipedia.com and found that animals and insects release sex pheromones to attract their mate. All-in-all, I think we can say that smell definitely has an effect on who we are/aren't attracted to.

[Erin Nash]

Taylor,
Do you have the link to that interview? It sounds really interesting?

[Shandis Cruz]

I would have to say that my thoughts and learning have grown tremendously. Beginning our unit, I wasn’t really aware of the complexity of evolution. I was really only aware of the one-sided view of this subject- the “Darwin-crazed” part- no we did NOT come from monkeys! Sadly, that is the one of the first things that comes to mind when you ask others about his theory. I thought that evolution was simply all about things changing over time, but thankfully I learned that wasn’t the case at all. Evolution is a much more in depth process than that. Evolution has to do with genes and ancestry, two far more complex components then change.

I owe a great deal of this to our class discussions. I think that most of my classmates thought the same about evolution as I did. I believe by all of us starting out on the same platform we were able to grow in our understanding together, kind of, bouncing ideas off of each other as we had questions. This has always been a really helpful learning method for me because it really allows me to see that my classmates are having similar questions in regard to the subject matter, that allows me to be more comfortable in my learning, knowing that I’m not the only one that has difficulty comprehending.

One of the concepts I still do not fully understand is from Berkeley’s website, “Evolution means that we're all distant cousins: humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales.” I talked to Mrs. Nash about this concept on Wednesday and she talked with me about how our genetic make-up and how certain structures and functions cause this “distant cousin” relation to form. I sort of understand that part of it, but I still think through my own further exploration of the matter I would be able to come to a better understanding.

After taking into consideration all of our class discussions as well as reading through our evolution packet, I posed the question, is there any case in animals that the female is showier than the male? With every discussion we have had on the matter, the male has always been much more attractive. I was determined to find an example that was completely opposite.

In researching this question I found that there is a case in which the female is in fact showier than the male. The site I found most helpful was Ross Park Zoo’s website. Their website explained, female Barn Owls are marked much more distinct than males and their colors are much more vibrant. A piece of information that I found really interesting is, “Heavily spotted females get fewer parasitic flies and may be more resistant to parasites and diseases.” Over all, my question allowed me to see that just because the showier male is more common, doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t a case that can be completely opposite.

Through all of our classroom learning I think that I have really got off to a good start when it comes to understanding evolution. I will be completely honest and say that evolution is still a topic that I struggle with “fully” understanding some of the theories behind it, by our learning has allowed me to be more open minded on the subject matter, also one of the greatest bits of information that I believe our class learned in this unit is that, this isn’t a topic that you HAVE to choice one side on. Evolution is an issue that you can incorporate with whatever lifestyle you have and still understand that it is happening all around you, whether you choose to accept it or not.

[Terra Younger]

I totally agree with this paragraph... "I owe a great deal of this to our class discussions. I think that most of my classmates thought the same about evolution as I did. I believe by all of us starting out on the same platform we were able to grow in our understanding together, kind of, bouncing ideas off of each other as we had questions. This has always been a really helpful learning method for me because it really allows me to see that my classmates are having similar questions in regard to the subject matter, that allows me to be more comfortable in my learning, knowing that I’m not the only one that has difficulty comprehending." I don't think that anyone one of us had a full understanding about evolution, and still don't.

[Marcy Withrow]

You're right about the rate we were all learning on. Everyone had questions and I know I learned a lot from what people asked. It was also cool how one question led to another and how evolution makes us ask a lot of questions. You had a very creative question. I've thought about that to, because aren't humans kind of like that too? I mean, we are way more complex than a simple organism, but sometimes girls are a lot nicer looking and cleaner than guys. I love how you found the barn owl though! Now, does the female still select the mate in this situation? Or does the male barn owl find the female since she stands out more?

[Hunter Ewart]

Well from the begining of our evolution section you asked us to tell you everything we knew about evolution. From the looks of the blog post i didn't know very much about this topic at all. I basically knew that the church was very against it and that someone said he came from monkeys. Well i was some what right but on the other hand i was really wrong to.

Well from the past i was kind of off on the information and the organizition of it all. Now i know that evolution is the change of a species over many generations. Darwin was the one that got pinned with the we evolved from apes theory. The fossical findings contributed to the iscover over different animal remains that have similar characteristics as the animal we have today.

My question is does what kind of signial is given of to tell the opposite sex that they are ready to mate? THe answer to that is called a phermona. Which is kind of like a hormone only hormes control out body alone, phereamones control and attract other animals of the same species to them. I wonder if humans have a phermone that we give off when we are searching for a mate? To find the answer to my question i talked with Mr. Nash and i looked at this site.

My view of evolution has slightly changed but at the same time it's not really something i could really get into about. It allowed me to have a different view on it other then what the church says about it. I do think that the visual aids did help when it came to darwin and his theory. This really allowed us to understand and work as a team and calberate together on this topic. I do think that we should do more projects like this one to were we can work together and solve problems as a team and we can learn from eachother.

[Hunter Ewart]

I found this cartoon and i thought that it would contribute to the discussion

What do you think?