Adaptations

 One example of micro evolution occurring in the last 50 years is the beak size of the soapberry bugs. In Florida the soapberry bugs had long beaks so they were able to reach into deep seed pods from a certain type of tree. There was then a species of tree that was introduced that had smaller and shorter seed pods. These shorter seeds where soon very populated and the soapberry bugs fed on these trees. Over generations the soapberry bugs began to have shorter beaks. This was due to natural selection because the bugs did not need the longer beaks in order to feed.


Dr. Scott Carroll: Ecological communities rapidly adapt to new species – Conservation Sense and Nonsense  ECOLOGICAL GENETICS ASPECTS OF ANTHROPOGENIC HOST-SHIFTS IN SOAPBERRY BUGS (RHOPALIDAE)

Comments

  1. Morgan PringnitzOctober 14, 2020 at 8:52 PM

    Hi Aubree!!!! The concept of microevolution and macroevolution was always confusing to me, but when learning about the soapberry bug example, it was easier to understand the concept since it was a present day example I could put into perspective! It was then easier to understand that microevolution are changes in a individual over a short time

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Common Descent Podcast: Sexual Selection

 One thing that I did not understand completely from the podcast was the difference between the types of  condition dependent indicator and the condition independent indicator .  It was said that the condition dependent indicator is when a female chooses a male that has survived to reproductive age so the male will pass those those traits that made him survive to the females young so her young will then be able to survive.  The condition independent indicator was said to be traits directly linked to a genetic benefit.  I am needing more information on the condition independent indicator because I am not sure how the female is able to pick out those traits.  One thing that I found to be new information to me and to also be interesting was "Sexy Sun Model" . This model states that there is no benefits to the traits that the females like, the females just like these traits for random reasons and this causes a feedback loop where more of the traits are in t...
Read more

Evolution Final Project

Image
  This is my Final Project ! I chose to represent my learning throughout this semester using a game-board!                                   The Game of Evolution It is kind of hard to see because I had to write in pencil because I am left handed and a pen would have smeared everywhere :) I have uploaded a video to YouTube going through and explaining all of my spaces and pictures!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8jMnRloG40
Read more

Phenotypic Plasticity

 Phenotypic Plasticity is the ability of an organism to change their phenotype in relation to the environment that they are in.  In the paper " The Genetic Basis of Adaptation following Plastic Changes in Coloration in a Novel Environment"  a study was done on lizards that live on these lava rocks. The lizards living on the dark lava rocks have a dark phenotype that enables them to blend into the rocks. These researches found that when you remove these lizards from the dark rocks and place them on a much lighter substrate, then these lizards become much lighter in color in order to blend in with the substrate. They also compared the lizards already living on the lava rocks to lizards nearby who were living off of the lava rocks. They found that when exposed to the dark colored substrate that both groups of lizards had a much darker phenotype, however, the researchers observed that the lizards already living on the lava rocks had darker phenot...
Read more