Evolution Blog

Sounds weird right? Almost sounds like a meme, if you get my pun… however, memetic selection is defined as cultural expressions that are perceived as important given the culture. Now how does this relate to biological evolution? Well comparing the two, the units of biological evolution are genes while memetic evolutions units are memes (ideas).…

When talking about coevolution is important to understand what this is meaning. The definition of host coevolution is the reciprocal evolutionary change that is occurring between a host and another organism which in most cases it is a pathogen, symbiont, or a parasite as they interact with each other over time. Humans have actually been…

Mate choice is choosing mates based on specific criteria where we see benefits through direct ways usually seen through material “goods” like food, nesting materials, and more. Some indirect benefits we see is usually genetic, but fall into a few hypothesis… The first hypothesis is the “good genes” hypothesis. This hypothesis states that the traits…

In nature, we see mates that will prevent access to mates. A few ways they do this is through direct or indirect interactions. Direct interactions is what exactly how it sounds, they are face-to-face interacting with the other sex. Indirect interactions is usually seen through mate competition, sperm competition, mate copying, and more. This competition…

Altruism is defined as the selfless act of helping others at the cost of oneself. In evolution, why would one sacrifice for another to benefit? Well, there’s a few answers to that as sometimes genes can spread by helping relative who share those genes. This idea is known as Kin Selection. Another idea that was…

These two words get commonly mixed up as people think adaptation can happen within someone’s lifetime. This is NOT true. Adaptation is defined as a trait that has been modified by natural selection to perform a particular function. This function benefits an organism given the environment. With this, there have been some hypothesis by giraffes…

Gene flow is commonly defined as the movement and incorporation of alleles into a population. There are multiple factors that can influence this, but ones that are most dominant are vagility which is the species specific pattern of movement, patchiness which is habitat fragmentation, and finally dispersal. Some of these can either increase or decrease…

When do mutations become significant for evolution? Well, this question isn’t easy to answer as many different mutations can happen over generations. For example, we can see somatic mutations that may affect individual survival, point mutation that leads to a substitution of a different nucleotide, or even silent mutations where there is no effect. With…

We see genetic drift being a change in allele frequencies of a population due to chance sampling of organisms NOT for any reason of survival as this is random. This can be seen through population bottleneck as natural disasters are usually shaping this change within the population. Some examples of these natural disasters are mudslides,…

Evolution and Religion has troubled many people and recently has been getting a lot of heat. Why is this? Well, to put it short, it’s been a troubling idea as some religions do not accept the idea of evolution. However, that’s not a bad thing either. Some people coexist within this idea as many scientists…