Modern medicine and evolution

Although doctors could fix a person if injured, it would not hurt if they knew how the body evolved. I believe that if doctors knew how the human evolved it would make their treatment better. If doctors knew how the human evolved they would have a better grasp on how the body evolved. So instead of just fixing the problem, they would be able to fully understand what the problem is, why it is a problem, and so forth. Its a little of a stretch, but maybe if doctors and other medical personal under stood how exactly the body evolved they might be able to find cures for some diseases that we find incurable.

bipedality and brain size

Bipedality is the ability for an mammal to walk on two feet instead of four. It was believed for the longest time that bipedality evolved after the increase in size of the brain. Bipedality may have evolved after small mutations rendered some mammals able to walk on two, which is easier and more efficient. Natural selection would then act upon these organisms looking upon them with favor. In return these bipedality mammals will be more successful than the mammals that walk on all four. After this evolved the animals would need a bigger brain mass to store how to use their new ability.

Y-chromosome Adam and mtDNA Eve

Chapter 1:
In Dawkins book, he warns us to stay away from two major misconceptions about evolution first that different people arose from different ancestors, he explains that all humans all arose from one common ancestor, and through adaptations, humans evolved to appear different. The second misconception is that we should not generalize where humans arose from because we do not know where they arose from.
Chapter 2:
Dawkins introduces two concepts to partially explain where humans might have evolved from. First he talks about mtDNA Eve, whom is believed to have lived in Africa. It is also believed that Eve gave rise to the female population, because the mtDNA is does not get shuffled so it would be identical to all females that are related. Dawkins also introduces Y-chromosomes which is supposed to explain the male side of the evolutionary story, because similarly to mtDNA it is not changed during development.

Evolution of Altruistic Behavior

The evolution of altruistic behavior has always been a puzzling question, especially when the benefits were directed towards unrelated individuals. How could such a thing evolve many wonder. The evolution of altruistic behavior could have evolve because it is quite helpful if everyone worked together even if they are not related, and more organisms working together gets the job done better and faster and everyone benefits if they all work together. Is like the prisoner's dilemma, in which the two prisoners have to work together to get the best benefit for the both of them.

Kin selection

Kin selection is a form of altruism, in which individuals in the group are related to some degree. One great example of kin selection is social insects, in which worker bees are sterile and can not reproduce and they actually help the queen bee with her offspring. This seems to but unselfish in every way imaginable, but there is still a little room for the selfish gene to show its face. In some cases of sterile castes the workers can sneak an egg or two of their own in or they could just be waiting for the queen to die so they can take her place.

Natural selection v.s Sexual selection

Natural selection and sexual selection is a selection process in which favorable traits in an individual are favored, by either nature or members of the opposite sex. Natural selection as Darwin explains is the survival of the fittest, on the other hand Dawkins describes this concept as the survival of the stable. Darwin describes natural selection as a process that filters out the weak at any age and allows on the strongest, with the best traits to survive. Sexual selection, Darwin elaborates, is a process at which the mates get to choose the favorable traits even if it is not favorably naturally. For example the huge, long, elaborate tails on the peacock, things that can not be describe though the process of natural selection.

Sex ratio- ESS

Fisher stated that sex ratio of 50:50 is an ESS, because if one looks at it, it holds a strong truth. The 50:50 sex ratio can be for the most part proven, because if you think about it no matter how the initial birth ration is cut it is still going to go back to the 50:50 sex ratio. Lets say for example more males then females were born this year that would mean that females had a bigger advantage when it came to finding a mate and that some of the males were not going to be able to mate, and die off. Even if you look at it the other way around in which there were more females than males then some of the female would go unmated and end up dying off, and this would still drive the sex ratio back to 50:50. Autosomes would favor this because autosomes are only carry half of the genes and when two of different sexes combine then it makes up the diploid. On the other hand sex chromosomes would not favor this because they want to be favored over the other. Sex chromosomes think that the next generation should only be made up of their genes.

Week 2: Major transitions

There are two main theories that address the question of how life came to be. The first heterotrophic is the belief that chemical along with the sun, made a 'primeval soup’ which gave rise to more and more complex organisms. This theory was strongly supported by Dawkins. On the other hand the autotrophic theory is the belief that organisms that made their own food probably arose first and then more complex organisms arose out of the first simple organism through natural selection, mutation and adaptation. This theory is supported by Mayhew. I am incline to believe Mayhew version of the origin of life because it is hard to believe that we evolved out of a 'primeval soup,' it is much easier to believe that we evolved from simpler organisms, because that evolution is being proved all the time such as birds evolving from dinosaurs

Domestication

The statement that Charles Darwin made about how the orgin of domesticated animals will remain a major mystery, in a way holds some truth. I mean yeah we have DNA, which answers a lot of the questions that we could think of, it still leaves a lot of room for speculation. Such as if dogs are truly related to wolves why can't the two mate and create pups. And if dogs came from wolves where did wolves come from, or are they the aboriginal species that Darwin speaks of. Moving on from that natural selection had to play some role in the development of dog, but it seems that natural selection would have not favored the domesticated animal, and the genes that were created in favor of the domesticated animal would have been stumped. I mean in order to get a dog you would have to keep crossing the runts of a wolf litter, but it seems to me that nature would not look upon small wolves favorably.

Testing can anyone see this, I am not sure if I am public. Thank you