IB 35ac Study Guide / Fall 2011 / David DeGusta

Lecture #2: Evolution

This study guide is based on the lecture, but it is not comprehensive. You are responsible for the entire content of the lecture regardless of whether it is included in this study guide or not. This is an optional study aid. Main Components of Lecture Why evolution is important. Why evolution is sometimes not intuitive. What evolution is not. What evolution is. Why Evolution Is Important If you want to understand life on earth, must understand evolution. Central theory of biology. Famous quote about how nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution (Dobzhansky). Need some understanding of evolution to know what questions to ask. Used two examples: Why is the standard condition for humans to have five fingers on our hands? And why are humans social (i.e., live in groups) rather than solitary? By taking an evolutionary perspective on five fingers and looking at other animals, we see that most mammals have five digits on their hands. Therefore we can infer that the common ancestor of mammals did as well. This is confirmed by what we find in the fossil record. So humans have just retained the ancestral condition. Nothing special happened in human evolution to give us five fingers. We just retained the default condition. Not enough pressure (to be described later) to change from five fingers. So the real question is not why humans have five fingers, but why dont hoofed mammals (e.g., horses, pigs, cows) have five digits? Thats where change has happened, thats where evolution happened. Same logic applies to question of sociality in humans. Most all primates are social. Weve just retained the ancestral condition, the default. Nothing special happened in human evolution to make us social. So the interesting question is not why are humans social, but why arent orangutans social (they are more solitary than other primates)? Two very basic facts about being human: standard condition is five digits on the hand, and being social. To understand either of them, must understand evolution. Same goes for pretty much any trait you can think of. Thats why evolution is important.
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 Why Evolution Is Not Always Intuitive Evolution can be hard to grasp because it does not happen at our scale its too slow, happening across hundreds of generations, and many thousands or millions of years. In contrast, gravity happens on our scale of time and size. So most everyone is comfortable with the theory of gravity, because it is obvious and seemingly simple on our scale, but evolution is more challenging. However, it is wrong to assume that everything important in the world happens at our scale. For example, we can only see less than 2% of the electromagnetic spectrum (the part we call visible light). But the rest of the spectrum is still important think sunburns, x-rays, radiation, radio transmissions, etc. So if we want to really understand how the world works, must try to think beyond the scale we live on. If we do that, things get more interesting. For example, gravity is not well-understood, at all, at the atomic level. There is, as of yet, no quantum theory of gravity. We dont really understand how gravity works at a fundamental level we dont know the process. So while gravity seems simple at our scale, its really not simple at all when you consider all scales. In contrast, we do understand the processes of evolution (below). So you can make an argument that the theory of evolution is actually better understood than the theory of gravity. If our lifespan somehow increased to a few million years (while that of other species remained the same) I think evolution would be pretty obvious to us, because we would then be on the same time-scale it operates on. What Evolution Is Not Many misconceptions about evolution, want to clear some of them up first. Evolution is not Darwin. Charles Darwin made fundamental contributions to our understanding of evolution (though many others contributed as well, before and since). And in science, the ideas must stand on their own, apart from who came up with them. So even if Darwin had recanted evolution (he didnt), it wouldnt really matter. Its about the ideas, the data, and the analysis that is what evolution is. Its about the science, not the scientists. Evolution is not really about the initial origin of life, thats a different area of science. From evolution, we can reconstruct that all life today ultimately shared a very simple common ancestor far far back in the past (this is not just an assumption). How that common ancestor itself arose is not, strictly speaking, part of evolution.
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 Evolution doesnt really deal with the transition from non-life to life. Can perhaps apply some evolutionary ideas to that problem, but its different. Instead, evolution deals with that common ancestor and all that comes after it. Evolution is, rather obviously, not a religion. In science, you have to be able to answer the question, how would you know if your idea is wrong. Thats not so much a concern in religion. Creationism and intelligent design have a hard time answering that question, which is part of the reason that they arent science. In evolution, as well see, we can answer that question. Evolution is not, in the view of most scientists, a replacement for religion. Science, including evolution, deals with how the world works. Science generally does not deal with how we should behave, how we should treat people. Thats historically what religion deals with. For example, the question of can atoms be split, thus releasing tremendous energy is one of science because it is about how the world works. Answer is yes, so it was possible to build an atomic bomb. But the question of whether that atomic bomb should be dropped on Japan, which the US was then at war with, is a question about how we should behave. It is not really a question of science. This is how many scientists (not all) distinguish between science and religion. Not telling you that is how you should think, just that it is a common view. Evolution is not just a theory. Creationists often belittle evolution by saying it is just a theory, thus implying it does not have much backing, because in common usage, theory can mean speculation. But in science, a theory is a hypothesis (or set of hypotheses) that have been tested and verified many times. So gravity is a theory, as is evolution. And a hypothesis is an educated guess that needs to be tested (or tested more). What Evolution Is Biological evolution is change across generations in their biological attributes. In thinking about evolution, must distinguish between process and pattern. We can study the processes that produce evolutionary change. We can also study the patterns that those processes have resulted in. In this lecture, focused on process (pattern to come next week looking at humans). Also focused on the level of the individual organism. Rather than level of gene (next lecture on genetics). Four processes that produce evolution: Selection Drift
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 Migration Mutation Selection Two main ingredients to natural selection variation and differential reproduction. Within a species, individuals vary in their attributes. (Well cover exact definition of species in a future lecture.) Some of that variation can be passed directly to offspring (next generation). I.e., some of that variation is heritable. We also observe that, in most cases, not all individuals in a species survive and reproduce equally. Some have more offspring than others. We can call those differences in survival and reproduction evolutionary fitness (or just fitness for short), and one simple way to think of fitness is just the number of offspring produced by an individual. Natural selection occurs when differences in fitness are correlated with differences in heritable traits. Those heritable traits that increase fitness will, on average, become more common over time (across generations), and those that decrease it will become less common over time (across generations). So this is change in biological attributes over generations, which is evolution. Some key points for natural selection: Must have variation if everyone the same, no natural selection. Variation must be heritable (so it can pass from one generation to next). Must have fitness differences if everyone has same fitness, no selection. Fitness differences must be correlated with variation. If they are random, not really selection. Selection does not create variation. It can only select among the variation that exists. Thats why no eyes in the back of our head, for example. But there are two other kinds of selection besides natural selection: artificial selection and sexual selection. Artificial selection is human breeding of plants and animals. Breeder controls fitness of a population by determining which individuals get to reproduce. Usually selects these individuals based on desirable characteristics. This is how we got breeds of dog, different kinds of domesticated plants, etc. Important because its a good demonstration of selection in action. Albeit selection driven by human determination of fitness, rather than the environment determining fitness (thus the artificial). Sexual selection is when there are fitness differences due to mate choices. In many species, there is some choice involved in who to mate with.
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If those choices are made based (to some degree) on heritable variation, then youll get change across generations, which is evolution. Thats sexual selection. Classic example is the showy tail of male peacocks. Increases their fitness because female peacocks make their mating decision based, in part, on those tails. Drift Imagine a population where there was no selection everyone survived and had the same number of offspring (so no fitness differences thus no selection). There would still be change across generations. Thats because we only pass on about 50% of our genetic material to each of our offspring (this is true of diploid organisms, which include virtually all mammals). Which 50% gets passed on is essentially random. So depending on which portions get passed on, you get change from one generation to the next, that is you get evolution. The differences introduced by which portion of your genes get passed on to your offspring is called drift, often referred to as genetic drift. It is different than selection, in that it has nothing to do with fitness, but it creates change across generations so it is a mechanism of evolution. An example was given in lecture, and you can find examples online easily. Drift has more impact in smaller populations than larger populations. The larger the population, the smaller the difference between generations based on drift. Migration If two previously separate populations of one species come into contact, reproduction will likely occur between them. The resulting generation will probably differ some from either of the two founding populations (each of which was probably at least somewhat different). So migration of groups within a species can cause change across generations, that is to say evolution. The importance of migration can vary greatly between species depending on the circumstances. Mutation Imagine a species with no selection, no drift, and no migration. Would still get (small) change between generations as a function of mutation. If a change in our DNA that happens during our lifetime gets passed on to our offspring, that changes the composition of the next generation (at least a tiny bit). So mutation is a mechanism of evolution. By itself, it does not produce big changes because mutations that get passed on are relatively rare. But it is very important for generating the variation upon which selection can act. Remember, selection does not create variation. Thats what mutation does.
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So mutation plus natural selection is a powerful force of evolution. Implications of Evolution We briefly discussed how an evolutionary viewpoint falsifies the notion that you can rank species from better to worse You can talk about more complex or less complex species You can talk about more numerous or more rare species But every species has evolved, every species has adaptations that fit it to the environment(s) it occupies. Its all about fit to the environment, rather than better or worse. For example, a sea cucumber is much better adapted to life in the ocean than we are. This destroys the ancient (and still well-established) idea in Western thought of a Great Chain of Being that ranked all life from lower to higher. From an evolutionary viewpoint, are humans special? Yes. But so are chimpanzees, daffodils, sea cucumbers, and all species. end