4.2 Reflection
- What have you learned so far? Not in the sense of what did we cover in class, but where have you personally have had some breakthroughs or changes in your understanding?
- If you go back to your original blog post where you defined evolution, how would you change it? How has your understanding of evolution changed since then?
- What concepts are you still struggling with? Where do you think you need additional help and clarification?
- Now that you have studied some of the basic concepts, what are you curious about? What are the things you are wanting to learn more about?
So far in this class, I have realized that I had some misconceptions about evolutionary processes. I was able to see how natural selection can drive evolution, but does not necessarily cause it. This along with some other foundational concepts have been able to be cleared up by this class. I also find enjoyment in writing these blog posts ungraded- it allows me to express my thoughts (whether right or wrong) in a place where my peers can comment and help me understand the material or subject of discussion better!
When I go back and re-read my original blog post, I think one thing I would change is where I stated that "all the changes a population or species undergoes is accounted for as evolution." I do not necessarily think that everything that happens is evolution, because some species could develop a different beak size, for example, in certain conditions, but that does not mean it is going to be passed down through generations.
I think I am still struggling with the concept of what is heritable and what isn't. Sometimes I get confused if the change a species undergoes will contribute to it being passed down genetically or not. I don't know if that totally makes sense, but essentially I am not sure what evolutionary traits are just beneficial in the moment and aren't passed down to offspring and then what traits survive and are shown in offspring.
I am wanting to learn more about how, say eye size, changes due to being in a different environment as some other species or individual. This really make me start to wonder while I was doing the mollies R exercise. It is fascinating to me how an individual can change so much from another individual of the same species!
I understand how it can be confusing to know what is heritable and what isn't. I could be wrong about this but I think that heritability isn't exactly something you'll be able to see and know. The R exercise using the cave mollies shows a way to infer heritabilities by using the scatterplots. If you could make a trend line the trait was probably heritable but if there was no trend and the dots were everywhere it probably isn't heritable. I don't think there's a surefire way to tell if a new evolutionary trait is heritable unless data is taken on multiple generations with that trait to check for the trend line.
ReplyDeleteIn my reflection post, I also noted that I had a lot of misconceptions, especially about natural selection. I think when it comes to heritability, the thing to look at is whether it is caused by the genetic code or whether it's something more superficial. At least that's how I mentally sort it out. I think that's why the mutation worksheet was helpful since it showed how the mutations can influence the traits by occurring in the coding/non-coding regions.
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