How To Choose The Right Free Evolution On The Internet

What is Free Evolution?

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

This is evident in numerous examples such as the stickleback fish species that can live in salt or fresh water, and walking stick insect species that are apprehensive about specific host plants. These typically reversible traits do not explain the fundamental changes in basic body plans.

Evolution through Natural Selection

Scientists have been fascinated by the evolution of all the living creatures that live on our planet for ages. Charles Darwin's natural selection theory is the most well-known explanation. This happens when people who are more well-adapted survive and reproduce more than those who are less well-adapted. As time passes, a group of well adapted individuals grows and eventually creates a new species.

Natural selection is a cyclical process that involves the interaction of three factors including inheritance, variation, and reproduction. Sexual reproduction and mutation increase genetic diversity in the species. Inheritance refers the transmission of a person’s genetic traits, including recessive and dominant genes, to their offspring. Reproduction is the process of generating viable, fertile offspring. This can be done through sexual or asexual methods.

Natural selection is only possible when all these elements are in balance. For example when an allele that is dominant at one gene causes an organism to survive and reproduce more often than the recessive one, the dominant allele will be more prominent in the population. If the allele confers a negative advantage to survival or lowers the fertility of the population, it will go away. The process is self reinforcing, which means that an organism that has an adaptive trait will survive and reproduce far more effectively than one with a maladaptive characteristic. The more offspring an organism can produce the more fit it is that is determined by its capacity to reproduce itself and live. Individuals with favorable traits, like having a long neck in the giraffe, or bright white color patterns on male peacocks, are more likely than others to live and reproduce which eventually leads to them becoming the majority.

Natural selection only acts on populations, not on individuals. This is a major distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution, which claims that animals acquire traits through use or disuse. If a giraffe extends its neck to reach prey and the neck grows larger, then its offspring will inherit this characteristic. The differences in neck size between generations will continue to grow until the giraffe becomes unable to breed with other giraffes.

Evolution by Genetic Drift

Genetic drift occurs when alleles of the same gene are randomly distributed in a group. At some point, only one of them will be fixed (become common enough to no longer be eliminated through natural selection) and the rest of the alleles will diminish in frequency. This can result in an allele that is dominant in the extreme. Other alleles have been virtually eliminated and heterozygosity diminished to zero. In a small population it could result in the complete elimination of recessive gene. This is known as the bottleneck effect and is typical of an evolutionary process that occurs whenever the number of individuals migrate to form a population.

A phenotypic bottleneck can also occur when the survivors of a disaster like an epidemic or a mass hunt, are confined into a small area. The surviving individuals will be mostly homozygous for the dominant allele which means they will all have the same phenotype, and thus have the same fitness traits. This could be caused by war, earthquakes or even a plague. Regardless of the cause the genetically distinct group that is left might be prone to genetic drift.

Walsh Lewens, Lewens, and Ariew employ Lewens, Walsh and Ariew employ a "purely outcome-oriented" definition of drift as any departure from the expected values of variations in fitness. They provide the famous case of twins who are both genetically identical and have exactly the same phenotype, but one is struck by lightning and dies, but the other continues to reproduce.

This kind of drift can be vital to the evolution of a species. It's not the only method for evolution. Natural selection is the most common alternative, in which mutations and migration maintain the phenotypic diversity of the population.

Stephens asserts that there is a huge difference between treating the phenomenon of drift as an agent or cause and considering other causes, such as selection mutation and migration as forces and causes. He argues that a causal mechanism account of drift allows us to distinguish it from the other forces, and that this distinction is crucial. He also argues that drift has a direction: that is it tends to reduce heterozygosity. He also claims that it also has a size, that is determined by the size of population.

Evolution through Lamarckism

When students in high school study biology they are often introduced to the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829). His theory of evolution, often referred to as “Lamarckism” is based on the idea that simple organisms transform into more complex organisms by taking on traits that result from the organism's use and misuse. Lamarckism is typically illustrated by an image of a giraffe extending its neck to reach leaves higher up in the trees. This could cause giraffes to give their longer necks to offspring, who would then get taller.

Lamarck was a French Zoologist. In his inaugural lecture for his course on invertebrate Zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris on the 17th May 1802, he introduced an original idea that fundamentally challenged the conventional wisdom about organic transformation. According to Lamarck, living things evolved from inanimate materials by a series of gradual steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest this, but he was widely thought of as the first to give the subject a comprehensive and general treatment.

The popular narrative is that Lamarckism grew into a rival to Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary natural selection and both theories battled each other in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually prevailed and led to the creation of what biologists call the Modern Synthesis. This theory denies that acquired characteristics can be inherited, and instead, it argues that organisms develop through the selective action of environmental factors, such as natural selection.

에볼루션  and his contemporaries believed in the idea that acquired characters could be passed down to future generations. However, this concept was never a central part of any of their theories about evolution. This is partly because it was never scientifically validated.

It's been more than 200 year since Lamarck's birth, and in the age genomics, there is a growing evidence-based body of evidence to support the heritability-acquired characteristics. This is referred to as "neo Lamarckism", or more commonly epigenetic inheritance. This is a version that is just as valid as the popular Neodarwinian model.

Evolution through Adaptation

One of the most common misconceptions about evolution is that it is driven by a type of struggle for survival. This is a false assumption and ignores other forces driving evolution. The struggle for existence is more accurately described as a struggle to survive in a particular environment. This may include not only other organisms but also the physical environment.

To understand how evolution operates, it is helpful to think about what adaptation is. Adaptation is any feature that allows a living thing to survive in its environment and reproduce. It can be a physical structure like fur or feathers. It could also be a behavior trait, like moving towards shade during hot weather or moving out to avoid the cold at night.

The survival of an organism is dependent on its ability to draw energy from the surrounding environment and interact with other organisms and their physical environments. The organism must possess the right genes to produce offspring, and it should be able to access enough food and other resources. In addition, the organism should be capable of reproducing itself at an optimal rate within its niche.

These factors, in conjunction with mutations and gene flow can result in an alteration in the ratio of different alleles in a population’s gene pool. The change in frequency of alleles could lead to the development of new traits and eventually new species over time.

A lot of the traits we admire in animals and plants are adaptations, for example, lungs or gills to extract oxygen from the air, feathers or fur for insulation long legs to run away from predators and camouflage for hiding. However, a proper understanding of adaptation requires paying attention to the distinction between physiological and behavioral characteristics.

Physiological adaptations, such as thick fur or gills are physical traits, whereas behavioral adaptations, like the desire to find companions or to retreat into the shade in hot weather, aren't. It is also important to remember that a the absence of planning doesn't result in an adaptation. Inability to think about the effects of a behavior even if it appears to be logical, can make it inflexible.