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Take Home EXAM3A
[Name of the Writer]
[Name of the Institution]
What was Darwin’s role on the Beagle?
Darwin’s role on the beagle was a naturalist. His job was to analyze, observe, collect, the remains of the animals, plants, fossils and rocks and specimens or anything that he sees on this journey. Darwin always had something about nature that fascinated him so much, he loved to go out on this voyage.
It was a five-year journey and by the time he got back, he was already a famous naturalist because one of his teachers published his work on his account.
What was significant about the new habitats Darwin visited?
He visited tropical rainforests and noticed that there were some so different kind of species that he had never seen before. This impressed him with the fact which was significant and obvious that genetic diversity was seen and observed.
3. What was significant about the rocks Darwin found in the mountains?
He visited rocks that suggested Darwin that once upon a time, they were beaches. The significant thing about the rocks was their abundance of the fossils and the amazement that continents and beaches could change so much over period of time. This change will continue in its dramatic ways in the future too. He found the fossils of extinct gigantic animals.
4. What was significant about the fossils Darwin found?
As per his nature mentioned earlier, he couldn’t live without digging up the rocks. He dug up the rock of a ground sloth, an extinct gigantic animal. As he dug up the rocks, he found in the fossils that living organisms of the past were clearly different. Hence, concluding that over the passage of time, living organisms have a strong tendency to change and show genetic diversity.
5. What did Darwin notice about life on the Galápagos Islands?
The most significant amongst all observation was made by Darwin was on the Galápagos Islands, a small island range with 16 volcanic islands, which were 600 miles (966 kilo meters) away from west coast of the South America.
The island was significant because of the genetic diversity it had shown at the time. Every island was different from the rest in a number of ways. Some were rocky and dry, and others were wet and received a rainfall in the near past days. Not only that, but the plant and the animal life along with the species is also different on every other island. For example, the giant tortoises on one island had saddle-shaped shells, while those on another island had dome-shaped shells. People who lived on the islands could even tell the island a turtle came from by its shell. This started Darwin thinking about the origin of species. He wondered how each island came to have its own type of tortoise.
Explain how a species can evolve through natural selection.
There were observations of rocks, volcanos on the islands which clearly implied with the fact that an organism can show a change over time due to multiple factors involved. New species arise from a pre-existing species, and every specie must have a common ancestor. However, within the set of the natural characters, every specie has its own genetic differences. A series of events which occurred in the past, and now the species have split from one another, still having a link, produces a tree which links to all living organisms. This is called “Evolution” and it is the process by which species change over a dramatic amount of time.
Natural Selection:
However, Darwin didn’t propose or said a word about the evolution of the organism but instead he proposed a mechanism through which the organism evolved. This mechanism was Natural Selection, a mechanism which appeared logical and elegant to the senses. The mechanism shows a better approach on the explanation of how the population evolve and become better to their suited environments.
Following are the several key steps which highlight the Darwin’s concept of Natural Selection:
Heritable Traits:
In living organisms, those traits are called heritable which have the ability to transfer from parents to off springs, or some of the characteristics are passed for example, eye color, walking style, etc. Darwin at the time, knew that this was happening. However, he didn’t know that genes are responsible for this
More production of off springs than their survival:
Organisms have the capability of producing more offs springs than their environment can support. This raises a competition among the species to survive in the toughest conditions among a limited number of resources.
Off springs show variation in their heritable traits:
As many of the features will be heritable as mentioned earlier, but their can be a possibility in the next or any generation that the trails (characters), will be slightly different from one another.
On the basis of these observations, it was concluded that
As many of the traits are heritable and over the number of generation, they show variation in their off springs, which will lead to evolution of the specie.
In a population, some individuals will obviously inherit the traits that will help them to survive and reproduce among an environment where there are limited food sources and a precaution of predators. The individuals which have better traits of survival and reproduction will leave more peers in the community than the lesser ones. This leads to the evolution of that certain species in the terms of survival and having the capability of reproduction even in the toughest environment.
References:
John Damuth. Selection among “species”: A formulation in terms of natural functional units. Evolution. 1985;39:1132-1146. 1146.
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