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11. No Lost Year Here

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  Looking back at this past year, I wouldn’t consider it a lost year as Times Magazine had put it. I would admit that the beginning of the year was hectic and often at times I did feel lost and isolated. When the pandemic first hit, I was living in my sorority house, constantly surrounded by love and support, and often chaos. When were asked to return home in March, I was devastated. I went back home, in the middle of southwest Kansas, far from all my friends. My family had taken Covid very seriously, as I believe everyone should have, and very much participated in social distancing all summer. At first it was difficult, but then I started to see this time as an opportunity for self-growth. I decided to take several online classes through Kansas State and focused on those religiously. This also gave me the time to really reflect on my career path and what my goals were for myself and my future. Pursuing a career in the dental field, I looked into many graduate schools and formulate...
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10. Microphis deocata Dimorphism

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  In this week’s module, we learned about sexual selection. I always wondered the reason why, across the animal kingdom, males and females in the same species can sometime look drastically different from each other. There are very unique aspects between the two, and most often males would possess external traits that are far more colorful and extravagant than the female. This is a process called sexual dimorphism, which is generally triggered by the process of sexual selection through competitive mating (Leary, 2020). This can manifest in many ways such as color, size, behavior, feathers, antlers, and more. One of the well-known displays of dimorphism is the peacock. The male peacock usually has a large fan of iridescent blue and green, while the female has shorter feathers of brown or gray. Dimorphism was first proposed in 1996 by an English geneticist named Angus John Bateman. The Bateman’s principle is summed up to be that in that most species, variability in reproductive succes...
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8. Genetic Variation

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  It is said that selection is often assumed to eliminate genetic variation. The question is asked, why is genetic variation then not eroded over time? Genetic variation is a measure of the variation that exists in the genetic makeup of individuals withing a population. We know genetic variation still displays in organisms because of the diversity in phenotypes. It is an important force in evolution and allows selection to increase or decrease allele frequency. Throughout the year, we have seen many diverse mechanisms that can explain why genetic variation is maintained in populations, instead of being eroded overtime from selection.   Mutations are constantly appearing due to many factors in our everyday lives. Selection does aim to get rid of these mutations, they still arise through environmental factors, DNA replication, and so much more. As we learned in class this year, some mutations can occur in an organism that could potentially be beneficial for fitness, and eventual...
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7. Kimura's Theory of Neutral evolution vs Natural Selection

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  A theory first put forward by M. Kimura in 1969, called Neutral theory, provided a conceptual framework for developing methods that detect the action of selection within a species genome. This method proposed at a molecular level, most evolutionary changes within a species are not caused by natural selection. Instead, it happens with random genetic drift, mutation, and is not selected for. This means that everything is random, and these drifts and mutations that are introduced will be randomly fixed as well. “For example, one strong prediction of the neutral theory is that at selectively neutral sites, the rate of substitution is equal to the rate of mutation,” (Duret, 2008). After researching more about Kimura’s theory, he “compares the amino acid sequence of hemoglobin a and cytochrome c in several mammalian species and found that the number of mutant substitutions was too large to be tolerable within Haldane’s theory of natural selection if the substitution number was extrapol...
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6.2 Inbreeding

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  Inbreeding an occurring situation in nature, with many species using this method of reproduction as opposed to random mating. Non-random mating does not in itself affect evolution because it does not change allele frequencies, but it does affect the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium. Non-random mating is the most common in the form of inbreeding. Inbreeding causes the production of an excess of homozygotes. In class, we learned that when we have an over excess of homozygotes, we cannot predict genotype frequencies by multiplying allele frequencies anymore. Inbreeding can be predictable if we know the inbreeding coefficient.     Some benefits of inbreeding that may lead to the evolution of assortative mating is that it enables an individual to be more selective with certain traits and providing a smaller gene pool to select from. An example of this would be in dog breeding. If a dog is homozygous for a specific gene, like AA, then it can only pass the A allele to its offspring....
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6.1 One Island Model of Migration

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  This week, in the video we watched in evolution, water snakes in and around Lake Erie exhibit a striking polymorphism. Mainland snakes primarily exhibit a striped phenotype called phenotype D. This helps them camouflage themselves in the leaf littered forests streams. In the case of the water snakes living on the islands in Lake Erie, the exhibit more reduced striping called phenotype B and C. Some individuals exhibiting no stripes, by a plain gray color will be called phenotype A. This phenotype is considered to be adaptive on the islands, where snakes are primarily on large, gray colored slaps of rock. In the context of the one-island model of migration, we will observe phenotype distributions.     Migration is the movement of alleles between populations with geographic variation. Most evolutionary biologists refer migration as gene flow, and this mechanism varies widely. Each population may experience slightly different environments, combination of mutations, selecti...
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Reflection Module 4

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  So far I have really enjoyed the class. I think applying our skills in different ways, such as importing data in R Studio creating our own blogs about different topics has helped me better understand the world of evolution. I have never used R Studio before this class, and trying to understand it at first was pretty tough for me. The TA’s and the professor have been super helpful in me understanding the program. I now know having the in-depth knowledge of R Studios programming could help myself through education, job positions, and lead me to different career paths. Some personal break-throughs would be applying the knowledge I’m learning, critically thinking it through, and then writing a paper about it. Blogging is a also a great way to build a community behind science and eventually writing about your own research. I think it is a great idea. Another personal break-through would be just by understanding evolution in general. Before this class, I had thought evolution rarely ev...
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