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For Wednesday…. Don’t read anything. One more kind of selection. Sexual selection Usually females drive this Easy to see in many bird species. Natural Selection. Fitness = reproductive success Always talk about fitness relative to other organisms in a population
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For Wednesday… • Don’t read anything.
One more kind of selection • Sexual selection • Usually females drive this • Easy to see in many bird species
Natural Selection • Fitness = reproductive success • Always talk about fitness relative to other organisms in a population • Fitness depends on the environment! • What works in one place may be detrimental in another
Natural Selection • Causes adaptations of organisms to their environment • Environments are constantly changing • So Natural Selection isn’t working towards some perfect goal • Only towards survival and reproduction in their current environment
Natural Selection • Works with what’s already there • Constantly rearranging genes, modifying species to make them ‘good enough’
Selection Pressure • Can change organisms in different ways • Directional selection • Pushes a population towards one extreme of a trait • Example: Male peacocks
Selection Pressure • Stabilizing selection • Keeps a population stable for a trait • This is the most common kind of selection – keeping things as they are • Example: Sickle-cell anemia
Selection Pressure • Disruptive selection • Extremes of a trait survive and reproduce better than the middle-range • Example: salmon
Natural Selection • Can operate on complex traits and behaviors • Maze-running ability in rats • Aggressiveness in rats • Pattern recognition in humans • Niceness in dogs
Evolution works with whatever is available • Like insect wings • Like mammalian eyes: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ybWucMx4W8
Evidence for evolution • Fossil record • Shows us intermediate forms • Shows us the story of evolution • Relies on accurate radio-dating techniques
Biogeography • Looking at how similar organisms are depending on how near their environments are • Shows that evolution works with available structures, and adapts to the environment • Darwin’s finches • Hawaiian honey-creepers
Comparing anatomy • Shows that the same structure from a common ancestor has been adapted for many uses • Like animal bone structure • Vestigal pelvis in whales
Convergent evolution • Organisms with very different origins evolve to similar forms when in similar environments • Tasmanian wolf and gray wolf • Cats and owls • Night vision, directional hearing, claws • Cacti and Euphorbia spp.
Lab and field experiments • Show that evolution happens like we expect • Fruit flies • Golf course grasses • Antibiotic resistant bacteria • Insecticide resistant insects
Molecular Biology • Reveals similarities and differences in the underlying genetic code of organisms • Can use this information to deduce how long ago organisms had a common ancestor • Evidence shows every organism alive came from a single-celled progenitor ~3.5 billion years ago
Phylogenetic trees • Used to show these relationships • The more distance you must travel along the tree from A to B, the less related they are
Speciation • Requires reproductive isolation: • New niche • New population, separated from source • Genetic change prevents mating
A good video • http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6573746166487556397