Parrett 1 Trevor Parrett Mrs.

Hunt Book Summary 2 4 May 2011 Biology Summary Fitness to humans means to work out and be fit. In evolutionary terms, it is similar. It is the contribution an individual makes to the gene pool of the next generation relative to the contribution of others. In English, this means that they are the ones that pass on the greatest number of genes because they are the ones that are the most fit, or well adapted. Fitness eventually turns into stabilizing selection, or the favors intermediate variants. This selection normally deals with the color of the skin, shell, etc. Normally represented by a bell curve, stabilizing selection shows the highs and lows of the colors. Directional selection is the shift of the overall makeup of the population by acting against individuals at one of the phenotypic extremes. In other words, a snail may get a darker shell if the island turned volcanic. Directional selection is the most common when a population travels to a new climate. Another example is the peppered moth. This was a moth that turned from white to black after the trees they lived on were affected by the industrial revolution. The final form of selection is the diversifying selection, which typically occurs when environmental conditions are varied in a way that favors individuals at both extremes of a phenotypic range over intermediate individuals. This means that the snails would have a varied background and they would have two forms of camouflage. For instance, if there were lava rocks on a beach, there would be black snails and sand colored snails. Chapter 15 marks the start of taxonomy. Taxonomy is the branch of biology concerning classifying the forms of life. Carolus Linnaeus developed a system in the eighteenth century dealing with a binomial system which gave the species two names: the genus and the species. To

Parrett 2 be completely accurate, scientists have come up with a term called a biological species which is a population or group of interbreed that can produce fertile offspring. The key there is fertile. When one species mates with another their offspring isnt fertile and therefore scientists dont have to worry about another species. However, speciation, or the evolution of a new species, could exist. Biologists are discovering more and more cases where the distinction between populations with limited gene flow separate gene flow blurs. It all comes down to the gene pool when we really get down to it because one mutation in the genes can cause many, many, problems or advantages. Adapting is also an important feature in nature. Adaptive radiation is the emergence of numerous species from a common ancestor introduced to a new and diverse environment. Adaptive radiation can be found in darwins finches, when describing the beaks. One thing that really helped Darwin in his research is the theory of continental drift. Thanks to a German meteorologist, this theory was formed and proposed that all the continents came from one supercontinent Pangea. The theory was that the convection currents pushed at the continental plates until they arrived in their present day locations. It is easily accepted because all the continents could fit together like puzzle pieces. The evolutionary history for a group of organisms is called phylogeny. Biologists typically represent genealogies as phylogenic trees. These are like family trees, but are the evolution of animals. These animals are sorted in taxonomy. The order goes: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, or kings play chess on fat guys stomachs. They are listed from greatest to least, meaning kingdom has the most animals and species is the most specific. This is the main, overall, way that scientists organize and sort animals.