Greetings, fans! I've decided to start a new Sci-Day mini-series, that will be based on my Evolutionary Biology class that I took in the Spring semester, in terms of organization (ie subject order) and topics. For this reason, unless otherwise stated, most of this information comes from the relevant lecture slides from the course, though I'm certain any Evolutionary Biology textbook would also contain the same or at least similar information. I will also say that because there will be a lot of stuff related to inheritance, alleles, and genes, you should do some reading up on exactly what those terms mean. You should have a good understanding of Mendelian inheritance, what an allele/locus/gene is, but we will not have to worry about things such as how DNA is replicated or any of the molecular processes. Since I am focusing all of my time on writing this, I do not have the time to give links to specific sources to get that information, but a decent Google search for terms such as "Mendelian inheritance" should give you a good enough start.
A key thing that I think is most interesting is that, while the things we will discuss are not really possible to test or examine in extinct species, once Dinosaur Battlegrounds has been fully released and all features are in place, simulations could let us investigate such questions given certain assumptions. One thing of note: I have covered several topics that would otherwise be included in this mini-series, so I will reference those posts instead of posting the same thing again.
In this post, I will just be introducing you to the topic of evolutionary biology, why it's important, and what it is. I hope you enjoy this, and learn something new!
Before we get started on anything, we need to ask ourselves one key question:
What is evolution?
To put it very simply, evolution is CHANGE. This may be development in an individual, such as in the life cycle of a frog. It can also be ecosystem change; for example, the recession of the Western Interior Seaway towards the very close of the Cretaceous altered the ecosystems surrounding it (as well as the Seaway itself, obviously). There is also cultural evolution - these are changes in how humans communicate with one another, but because humans are boring and we want to get to the good stuff that relates to dinosaurs, we'll just pretend it doesn't count.
However, the type of evolution that you probably first think of when you hear the word is biological evolution. Biological evolution is the change in properties of some population of organisms over generations. These properties must be HERITABLE, which leads us to a more precise and accurate definition: biological evolution is the change in allele frequencies in a population over time. A sort of 'synonym' for biological evolution is 'descent with modification', a term used by Darwin himself in his famous work, "On the Origin of Species".
Evolution is extremely important to understand because it is the central unifying theory of modern biology. As Dobzhansky put it, Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light it becomes a pile of sundry facts some of them interesting or curious but making no meaningful picture as a whole" (Dobzhansky, 1973). It allows us to gain an understanding of both how observed features (on a genetic and anatomical basis) developed, and why. Perhaps the best example I can think of would be the evolution/origin of birds. Without any evolutionary context it would be impossible to understand just how birds evolved powered flight, or their origins. Now, because of our great understanding of biological evolution, as well as advances in both methodology and biological theory, we know that birds evolved from a lineage of theropod dinosaurs during the Mesozoic.
That is all for this week - I could go on forever about how cool and important evolution is, but I don't want to end up being redundant and boring! Next week we'll go a bit more into Darwinian evolution, so stay tuned!
Acknowledgements:
Evolutionary Biology, Spring 2016. Lecture Notes. University of Kansas.
Dobzhansky, T. 1973. Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. The American Biology Teacher 35: 125-129.
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