In the beginning of the 19th century, most people in the western world had
a solid theory about our origins: all creatures were formed by a single creator.
But then, in 1831, a 22-year old student decided to go on an expedition that would
change everything. The young man spent years on remote islands,
investigating living organisms and taking careful notes on their differences.
After close to five long years, the man returned home. He organized his findings,
and started to write his own theory on the origin of species.
Decades later, in 1859, Charles Darwin, supported by the work of Alfred Wallace,
challenged the status quo with his theory of evolution - based on natural selection.
Natural selection is the process through which
populations of living organisms adapt, reproduce, and change.
This is possible because organisms evolve when random mutations happen
in the DNA of reproductive cells. Stored in cells the DNA contains
instructions that determine an organism's characteristics early after conception.
For instance, two animals with particular features, can have a baby with very special ones.
Since most of us are in competition for limited resources, territory,
or potential partners, certain traits are beneficial, while others are not.
And when the survival of one is challenged by the presence of another,
some can get by as they are, while others must adapt or they will die out.
One way to adapt is to specialize for particular
ecological niches in order to survive and reproduce.
Over time, it may be that there are certain mutations that later
happen to improve one's ability for reproduction.
If these particular traits are also heritable, that is,
passed from parent to offspring, then there will be a reproductive
advantage - and that’s what modern evolutionary theory defines as fitness.
The phrase "survival of the fittest'' stands for the process within a population, where fit
variants leave reproductive copies of themselves and less fit variants reproduce less or disappear.
Over generations, fit traits become the dominant variation
in a population and can eventually emerge as a new species - a group of
similar organisms who interbreed with each other - and no others.
And as all of this happens in the surroundings of the organism, which may change any time,
it’s their natural environment that "selects for" how successful a species is at reproduction.
And this is why the entire process is known as natural selection.
One famous real life example is the story of peppered moths, which populated the
United Kingdom with the perfect texture to blend into their natural environment.
In the 1800s, the industrial revolution then changed that. Factories and homes
darkened the skies and the smoke from coal blackened everything.
Over time the tree barks also became darker, and white moths were more visible to predators,
while the less prevalent black moths became invisible.
As a result, peppered moths were more likely to
be eaten and dark ones ended up having a reproductive advantage.
By 1970, in some regions almost all moths had dark wings.
They were not stronger, not faster, not smarter, but simply fitter.
As humans started paying attention to the environment,
this tendency reversed. Today mostly white moths dominate in the UK again.
Random genetic mutations were giving dark moths a reproductive advantage in
a certain environment for a certain period of time.
What are your thoughts? Are all species related? And if so,
do all stem from the same single origin? And if that's the case,
how do we solve the chicken and egg problem? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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