Emily's Take on Evolution

 In most species we see males being colorful and displaying mating acts to court the females. In that case females are most often a drab dull color. However, in  Microphis deocata the exact opposite situation occurs. The female in these pipefish extend their colorful bellies when they are in breeding condition and make an accordion like movement to attract/choose a male mate. The male is actually the more drab individual. I believe the reason something like this evolves is related to the fact that male Rainbow Belly Pipefish, just like seahorses, are the ones that carry the eggs until they hatch. The male is responsible for a role that in most other species is almost always carried out by the female. The female deposits her eggs in an area on the male's underside where they will stay until they hatch. From the research I've done I found out that  Microphis deocata are actually related to seahorses. Both species belong to the  Syngnathidae family. I think it makes sen...

Option 2: This is a huge question to begin to consider. I'm definitely not sure of the answer but I will give it my best shot. An example where phenotypic plasticity could slow down evolutionary change could be the hares that are white in the winter and brown in the warmer months. These animals' ability to change their phenotype kind of cheats the system of selection in a way. Instead of either adapting to blend in or sticking out and therefore not surviving attacks from predators, they just shift back and forth between what is favorable without any hereditary aspect. Here, they don't have to evolve so the trait is stagnant. The ability to change might be passed on but the fur being brown or white is not adaptive.  An example where phenotypic plasticity could actually potentiate evolutionary change is developmental plasticity. Different offspring could be exposed to different cues at different times, therefore changes the course/speed of their development. This variation in...

 Although selection is a major mechanism by which evolution functions, it is not even close to the only one. Selection, genetic drift, migration, mutation, non-random mating, and more play a role in creating the composition of populations. Selection may favor specific traits in organisms and then allow those to be passed on, but at any point in time the environment could shift causing those same traits to be unfavorable. And then selection will kick in once again and the allelic frequencies of that population will shift to better fit with the current circumstances. Short-term, selection might reduce genetic variation, but if you look at the big picture it really doesn't. Certain places might stay somewhat constant, but the world as a whole is constantly shifting and changing. One slight change could have major ramifications for selection and therefore the population as a whole. This isn't a one and done kind of thing.  Additionally, as I stated before, selection is only one pi...

 I have learned more about thinking deeply and critically from this class. I have also learned to apply this to interpreting data sets and figures. Even if something appears to be a certain way based on a curve or statistic there is often much more that goes into it. It was a real breakthrough for me when we created a simulation to understand heritability of traits in cave mollies. Looking at the graph for body size, it appeared that it was not heritable. However, that didn't really seem right to me. In class when I realized that environmental factors of food availability were actually impacting the size these organisms could grow to despite their genes, it blew my mind. A big part of me wanted to take the easy way out and say well this trait obviously isn't heritable, but finding out the meaning behind the trend changed my perspective. It might sound silly, but after that I really had to evaluate myself and get my priorities back in line. This circumstance made me remember the...

 Inbreeding is the mating of individuals that are closely related through common ancestry. A cost of inbreeding is that it can facilitate adaption by bringing together alleles that would usually never interact. It can also provide a sort of exit mechanism. However, there are many more costs to inbreeding than benefits I would say. A cost of inbreeding is that it increases the probability that individuals will be homozygous for a recessive deleterious allele. This is because if a parent is heterozygous and has one recessive deleterious allele that they pass on to their offspring, and two of those offspring mate, there is a possibility for them each to contribute that mutated allele to their offspring meaning the mutation would be expressed (as they are now homozygous recessive). We all have deleterious alleles, but they are not expressed due to their heterozygous nature. It only becomes an issue when two of these recessive deleterious alleles combine. Additionally, increased probabi...