Charlotte Stubbins

ANTH 2301
M/W 1-2:30

Flunkeys
Millions of years ago a deme of monkeys lived together and they breed together. The monkeys
always stayed in the same location and never moved. Then one day there was an earthquake
which caused the deme of monkeys to separate. This caused genetic drift because the size of the
population was largely reduced and there was less genetic diversity. This also caused geographic
isolation because the original population of monkeys were separated. One group of the monkeys
ended up staying in the original location while the other ended up many miles away from the
original location. In the new environment it was a forest and the monkeys loved to eat the bugs
that flew around in the area. It was hard for the monkeys to catch them because they could not
jump high enough to eat them. Over a period of time the monkeys became better adapted to
jumping high in order to catch the bugs. Then one day a monkey had a mutation and was given
wings. That monkey used that to its advantage and it made it easier for them to catch the bugs he
ate. The moneys saw the benefit of that trait and wanted to mate with that monkey. Through
natural selection that the monkeys who could fly were more fit than the monkeys who couldnt
fly. There were already monkeys where the separated monkeys ended up and then through gene
flow the flunkeys began to mate with the monkeys who were there first. The genes from one
population was begin transferred to another. The monkeys in the original location did not get
wings because they had no advantage for them because there environment the food was close to
the ground. Over time the flunkeys became a different species from monkeys and they cant
breed together.