Module 1

 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 animal becomes adapted to hunting a specific animal, and that animal dies off, causing the predator to lose it's primary food source. This would kill off all animals of the predator population that were not adapted to hunt other animals, causing the predator population to change. That would be one specific example of evolution, but there are many others. For that reason, evolution is hard to put into a single sentence. However, if I had to, I would define it as this: Evolution is the change in heritable traits in a population throughout generations. 

    Evolution is defined as a theory, but it's so widely accepted in scientific communities that it might as well be fact. Evolution in my opinion, is only described as a theory because it's so hard to find concrete evidence that evolution exists, and the fact that the defining theory of evolution is that all organisms were derived from a single organism. It's so hard, if not impossible, to find the original organism that this takes away from the theory. In addition to that, it's also hard to find all the organisms that connect everything. For these reasons, I would define evolution as a theory, but a theory with facts inside of it. So many parts of evolution would have to be proved as fact for evolution itself to be considered fact.