Ian's Thoughts

 Mutation Rates-     In my opinion, mutation rates do evolve. When thinking about individuals within species, darwin's postulates states that some variations within a species are heritable and that the individuals with the most favorable variations reproduce the most. Because of this, it can be inferred that some variations may be needed sooner than others if the species is trying to live on. In this case, the mutation rates would be faster and would take effect in a large population faster if the individuals in a species without the favorable trait die out and leave only the ones with the trait. In this case, the mutation would evolve to be faster than it originally would have, to ensure the survival of the species. Mutations happen all the time well, they are just usually fixed by something that is looking for mutations in new proteins or DNA. If a mutation occurred on a gene that is coded to fix mutations, that would increase the mutation rate exponentially, since the ...

 Fitness-         In my mind fitness is something that can be both very easy to define and very hard to define all at once. I would define it as how well an organism is able to live and reproduce throughout its lifetime. In a natural population, this includes how many offspring the animal in question has, how long it lives, how well it evades predators, and how easy it is to gather the food it needs to survive. You could shorten it down however, how long it lives generally decides how many offspring it has, which increases its overall fitness.      As an example, if you look at a population of something like whitetail deer in the wild, The deer that end up having the most offspring would be the fittest in the population. To quantify this, tracker bands could be put on deer in a specific area and population, and the amount of offspring they produce in their lifetime could be carefully monitored. In addition to this, you could take into account how ...

 Darwin's Idea-     My favorite prediction of Darwin's idea of descent with modification is that earth and life are old. In my previous post, I described life as millions of years old. However, recently scientists have found evidence that life existed as long as 3.42 billion years ago, which is insane (Science Advances et al.). These scientists discovered Putative filamentous microfossils in a hydrothermal vein in South Africa. The filamentous microfossils belonged to a population of bacteria that produced methane, and lived off the nutrients around a hot vent deep in water (Science Advances et al.). Filamentous microfossils are microscopic fossils that only remain due to the keratin content of the original cellular organisms (Science Advances et al.). These filamentous microfossils are so small, they need to be viewed with a microscope, and the average diameter of these microfossils is around 0.5 μm  to 1.1 μm, with the average length being around 10 μm to 20 μ...

 Evolution      Evolution is a very hard to describe term that tries to explain how organisms change from generation to generation. Even that doesn't do the term justice, as organisms themselves don't evolve throughout their life. Populations of a species evolve from generation to generation, and eventually new species are born. Survival of the fittest, natural selection, and mutations all contribute to evolution. Evolution states that all species came from one original species, which is what blows my mind the most. Millions of years of evolution has had a single celled organism divulge into the millions of species of life today. Through natural selection and survival of the fittest, organisms in a population die off due to changes in the environment. Whether that be changes in the food that is available, changes in the climate, or other environmental factors. The other animal populations in an area can also contribute to natural selection, such as if an an...