Five Free Evolution Projects For Any Budget

What is Free Evolution?

Free evolution is the concept that natural processes can lead to the development of organisms over time. This includes the appearance and growth of new species.

A variety of examples have been provided of this, including various varieties of stickleback fish that can live in salt or fresh water, as well as walking stick insect varieties that are attracted to specific host plants. These are mostly reversible traits can't, however, explain fundamental changes in basic body plans.

Evolution through Natural Selection

The development of the myriad of living organisms on Earth is a mystery that has intrigued scientists for many centuries. Charles Darwin's natural selectivity is the best-established explanation. This process occurs when individuals who are better-adapted survive and reproduce more than those who are less well-adapted. Over time, a population of well adapted individuals grows and eventually forms a whole new species.

Natural selection is a cyclical process that is characterized by the interaction of three elements: variation, inheritance and reproduction. Sexual reproduction and mutation increase genetic diversity in the species. Inheritance is the term used to describe the transmission of a person's genetic traits, including recessive and dominant genes to their offspring. Reproduction is the production of fertile, viable offspring which includes both asexual and sexual methods.

All of these variables must be in harmony to allow natural selection to take place. For example when a dominant allele at the gene causes an organism to survive and reproduce more frequently than the recessive allele, the dominant allele will become more common within the population. However, if the allele confers an unfavorable survival advantage or decreases fertility, it will be eliminated from the population. The process is self-reinforcing, meaning that an organism with a beneficial characteristic can reproduce and survive longer than one with an inadaptive characteristic. The more offspring an organism can produce the more fit it is, which is measured by its ability to reproduce itself and survive. People with desirable traits, like longer necks in giraffes, or bright white patterns of color in male peacocks are more likely survive and have offspring, and thus will become the majority of the population in the future.

Natural selection only acts on populations, not on individuals. This is a significant distinction from the Lamarckian evolution theory that states that animals acquire traits either through use or lack of use. If a giraffe stretches its neck in order to catch prey and the neck grows longer, then the offspring will inherit this characteristic. The differences in neck size between generations will increase until the giraffe is no longer able to reproduce with other giraffes.

Evolution through Genetic Drift

Genetic drift occurs when alleles from a gene are randomly distributed within a population. At some point, only one of them will be fixed (become widespread enough to not longer be eliminated through natural selection) and the rest of the alleles will diminish in frequency. This can result in dominance in the extreme. The other alleles are essentially eliminated, and heterozygosity decreases to zero. In a small group this could result in the total elimination of recessive alleles. This scenario is called the bottleneck effect. It is typical of the evolutionary process that occurs when an enormous number of individuals move to form a population.

A phenotypic  bottleneck can also occur when survivors of a disaster like an outbreak or a mass hunting event are concentrated in a small area. The survivors are likely to be homozygous for the dominant allele which means that they will all have the same phenotype, and thus have the same fitness traits. This situation could be caused by war, earthquakes, or even plagues. The genetically distinct population, if left vulnerable to genetic drift.

Walsh Lewens, Walsh, and Ariew define drift as a deviation from the expected values due to differences in fitness. They provide the famous case of twins that are genetically identical and share the same phenotype. However one is struck by lightning and dies, whereas the other continues to reproduce.

This kind of drift could play a significant role in the evolution of an organism. This isn't the only method of evolution. Natural selection is the primary alternative, in which mutations and migration keep phenotypic diversity within a population.

Stephens claims that there is a major difference between treating the phenomenon of drift as a force, or a cause and considering other causes of evolution such as mutation, selection and migration as causes or causes. He argues that a causal-process model of drift allows us to separate it from other forces and that this distinction is crucial. He further argues that drift is both direction, i.e., it tends towards eliminating heterozygosity. It also has a size, which is determined based on the size of the population.

Evolution through Lamarckism

Biology students in high school are frequently exposed to Jean-Baptiste lamarck's (1744-1829) work. His theory of evolution, commonly called "Lamarckism, states that simple organisms develop into more complex organisms by adopting traits that result from the organism's use and misuse. Lamarckism is typically illustrated with a picture of a giraffe that extends its neck further to reach higher up in the trees. This could cause the necks of giraffes that are longer to be passed on to their offspring who would then grow even taller.

Lamarck was a French zoologist and, in his inaugural lecture for his course on invertebrate zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris on the 17th of May in 1802, he presented an original idea that fundamentally challenged the previous understanding of organic transformation. According to Lamarck, living creatures evolved from inanimate materials through a series of gradual steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest that this could be the case but his reputation is widely regarded as having given the subject its first general and comprehensive treatment.

The most popular story is that Lamarckism became an opponent to Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary natural selection, and both theories battled each other in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually triumphed and led to the development of what biologists today call the Modern Synthesis. This theory denies acquired characteristics are passed down from generation to generation and instead argues organisms evolve by the influence of environment elements, like Natural Selection.

Lamarck and his contemporaries believed in the notion that acquired characters could be passed on to the next generation. However, this notion was never a major part of any of their evolutionary theories. This is due to the fact that it was never tested scientifically.

It's been over 200 year since Lamarck's birth and in the field of genomics, there is a growing body of evidence that supports the heritability acquired characteristics.  Suggested Resource site  is also referred to as "neo Lamarckism", or more generally epigenetic inheritance. It is a version of evolution that is as valid as the more well-known Neo-Darwinian theory.

Evolution through adaptation

One of the most popular misconceptions about evolution is being driven by a struggle to survive. This view is inaccurate and ignores other forces driving evolution. The struggle for survival is more accurately described as a struggle to survive within a specific environment, which can include not just other organisms, but also the physical environment itself.

Understanding how adaptation works is essential to understand evolution. Adaptation refers to any particular characteristic that allows an organism to live and reproduce in its environment. It can be a physiological feature, such as fur or feathers or a behavior, such as moving into shade in hot weather or stepping out at night to avoid the cold.

The survival of an organism is dependent on its ability to extract energy from the environment and to interact with other organisms and their physical environments. The organism needs to have the right genes to create offspring, and must be able to access enough food and other resources. The organism must be able to reproduce at an amount that is appropriate for its niche.

These elements, along with mutations and gene flow can result in a shift in the proportion of different alleles within the gene pool of a population. As time passes, this shift in allele frequencies can result in the development of new traits, and eventually new species.

A lot of the traits we admire about animals and plants are adaptations, like the lungs or gills that extract oxygen from the air, feathers or fur for insulation long legs to run away from predators and camouflage to hide. However, a proper understanding of adaptation requires a keen eye to the distinction between behavioral and physiological traits.

Physical traits such as thick fur and gills are physical characteristics. The behavioral adaptations aren't like the tendency of animals to seek out companionship or to retreat into the shade in hot weather. Furthermore it is important to understand that lack of planning is not a reason to make something an adaptation. A failure to consider the consequences of a decision, even if it appears to be logical, can make it inflexible.