Evolution - OkState 2020

Something that consistently makes me feel happy is my dog, Ryder. He absolutely loves to cuddle and is always ready for a new adventure. I always look forward to coming him from a long day of work to cuddle him while doing homework, and for us to try to take on new hiking adventures on Saturdays. My mental health has seriously improved since adopting my little man!    

  When I started my undergraduate career there were a few things I had misconceptions about. One was regarding inheritance/genetics. I for some reason always thought that when a baby was conceived that the chromosomes mixed together (like swirling together two paint colors making a new color) which ultimately created the appearance (genotype & phenotype) of the child. During genetics class in Spring of 2020 is when I realized this idea was incorrect. During that class I realized that while the zygote will get on copy of alleles from each parent the alleles don’t exactly mix, more so the combination of the alleles determines what phenotype is shown. However, they can be a little “mixing” through crossing over and recombination but that is shown in the zygote if that is the allele that get by chance. I would day that this understanding was gradual throughout the class. Another misconception I had was about mutations. I always assumed that mutations where bad, and this idea was ...

  Is kin selection altruism? To answer this question I feel we should start with defining what each of these terms mean. Kin selection is technically a strategy in evolution. It is where reproductive success on an organism’s relatives is favored even if it decreases the individual survival or reproduction of the organism. Altruism is defined as “the principle and moral practice of concern for happiness of other human beings or other animals, resulting in a quality of life” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism ). With that in mind, I feel like kin selection could be viewed as altruism. I see this viewpoint because kin selection as a strategy is selfless and has more concern for the wellbeing of the relatives of the organism rather than the individual. Wellbeing is also often correlated with happiness, if kin selection is an evolutionary practice, then the end result is the quality of lives for the long run.

  One of the rapid evolutions we learned about was the crop pests becoming resistant to insecticides over a 50 year time period.  At the start of the use of insecticides in 1940, there were no crop pests that were resistant to it. Meaning that it killed almost all the pests that it was sprayed for. One would think that if there were no crop pests resistant to it at the start that it would be a great solution and continue to work.  That did not turn out to be the case. In 1950 there were some crop pest species that were resistant to the insecticides. This means while a majority of the crop pest species were still killed by the insecticides, some survived.  These survivors were then able to pass on the genes that allowed them to be resistant to the insecticide to their offspring.  This same process would continue to happen every time the crop pest species reproduced. Meaning over the next 40 years the crop pest species would have a larger and larger population tha...

  In these lectures, we discussed the different variations of the phylogenetic theme. The variation that was most intriguing to me was hybrid speciation. Hybrid speciation occurs when two different species in a phylogenetic tree mate and produce an offspring that is an entirely different species. This species didn't evolve along the lineage but was created through reproduction.                                                                                 +                               = An example of hybrid speciation that I found rather interesting was that of the grolar bear/pizzy. This species is the offspring of a grizzly bear mating with a polar bear. I thought this particular offspring was interest...

  Phylogenetic Trees Hi class! Today we are going to be learning about phylogenetic trees.   A phylogenetic tree is a graphic tool that links together living creatures and can show the relatedness of these organisms. It depicts the history of the evolution of a group of species from a common ancestor. This tool is called a tree because of the linkage of the linage (how the organism relates to common ancestors) is called branching, and because the organism at the end of a branch is considered a leaf. Essentially this tool is giving you a visual map of the evolution of groups of species.   These phylogenetic trees can be broken into two separate groups. One group is called a monophyletic. These groups would be considered more closely related to each other because it contains all descendant species from a single common ancestor. This graphic depicts a lineage of Eevees (disclaimer: Pokemon evolution is not the same as actual evolution, I am simply using my ...