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Grist for Evolution's Mill Humans possess assorted means of inciting rapid evolution in an organism. At times, our methods are clumsy, unintentional and unbeknownst, and at times they are subtle and ingenious. Selective breeding might be considered the strongarm approach to evolution. When it comes to selective breeding, finesse goes out the door and brute strength solidifies a desired trait, generation after generation. The result, undesired traits are also compounded over these many generations, leading to a creature that is "more or less what we hoped for." Planes, trains and automobiles, and of course, ships, uproot animals daily and deposit them in foreign places with unprepared, ill-equipped and off-guard organisms waiting to be booted out of their own, hard-earned evolutionary niches. Each time we travel, humans bring with them, a slew of organisms meant only for the place they evolved in and yet, they often end up in places wholly unprepared to deal with them. Antibiotics fuel the fires of evolution like nothing else. The ultimate testament to phrase, "that which does not kill one, makes him stronger," bacteria can evolve in a matter of days, to build up a resistance to a given antibiotic. The weak die off, the strong reproduce and a succeptable population becomes one to be reckoned with. All of these things hinge on human involvement. Nowhere in nature can organisms evolve as quickly as they do, when humans are the driving force. It seems that the confused hand of humanity is the only power so great as to be able to cause the creatures around us to evolve so quickly -- so beyond our control, in some cases. Selective breeding achieves results (flawed though they may be) that it would take nature many more years to come by. Antibiotics supercharge the evolution of harmful bacteria in manner completely independent of the natural world. Whether we intend it or not, evolution happens and when humans are involved, it happens very quickly. Essential
Questions, Reflections Reflection on Exhibition
Presentation Reflection on Community
Service Do human alone effect rapid evolutionary change?
1. History of evolution. How does evolution occur, why does it occur? Evolution's causes. “survival of the fittest” Natural progression
of a species
2. Some would say
that evolution did not occur at all.
3. Everything evolves. Survival of the fittest still drives animal, insect, bacteria, viral evolution. Mordern medicines speed up the evolutionary process greatly. Drugs are introduced and bacteria evolve to compensate.
4. In the modern world, does the concept of “survival of the fittest” have any merit? Do all examples of rapid evolutionary change hing on human involvment?
Is rapid evolutionary change a phenonmenon unique to only things humans comes into contact with, in some way or another?
5. Rapid evolutionary change Survival of the fittest Genetic engineering Evolution Natural progression (of a species)
6. Rapid Evolutionary Change. (essential) The “theory” of evolution. Is it a theory or is it fact?
Does evolution know the difference between a helpful and a harmfull trait? Does nature have some sort of compass that guides evolution toward the better or is becoming better simply a side effect of becoming more suited for a certain environment?
How does natural selection go about its buisness? Does natural selection, unaided by human hands, effect rapid evolutionary change?
The Examples. (essential) Is selective breeding a form of rapid evolutionary change? Is this something unique to humanity or is selective breeding simply a sped up, imperfect form of natural selection?
Because organisms can be transported to alien places as a result of humanity's mobility (planes trains, boats and automobiles), is the rapid evolutionary change caused in this manner, unique to humans? Are there, perhaps, animal hitchikers that stow away on assorted birds to get to new, alien environments?
Viral and bacterial evolution is the fastest documented, since they have such pathetically short lifetimes. Does the rampant evolution humans cause with our antibiotics and antiviral drugs cause these organisms to evolve in a manner they never would have without human intervention?
Finally, does the
pesticides used by humans cause insects to evolve faster than they
would and in a manner they never would in nature? Do humans alone cause
these insects to mutate in the way they do? |