Kin selection

In essence, social evolutionists study how cultures and societies change over time. Many early nineteenth-century anthropologists subscribed to the notion of unilineal evolution. That is, the belief of universal stages of cultural development that characterized societies and their transformation from primitive to complex (11). The American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) acts as a proper representative for the group of early social evolutionists. Despite the overwhelming popularity…

What is Eugenics? EugenicsEugenics is a movement that is aimed at improving the genetic composition of the human race. Historically, eugenicists advocated selective breeding to achieve these goals. Today we have technologies that make it possible to more directly alter the genetic composition of an individual. However, people differ in their views on how to best (and ethically) use this technology. ❖ Improvement of human population by controlled breeding and desirable characteristics. ❖…

October 14, 2015 Olga Naomi Sokolova Why is there redundancy in the genetic code? Does this seem like a useful feature of the genetic code? Why or why not? There is redundancy because there are more codons than there are amino acids, so quite a few amino acids are represented by more than one codon. This is beneficial because if there is a mistake during transcription that damages one of the codons, a visible and detrimental mutation may not occur because all of the others would still be able…

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution erupted as one of the most revolutionary scientific ideas of the nineteenth century. The idea proposed that the living organisms of Earth evolved from simpler organisms through the elongated process of natural selection. The theory of evolution evoked enormous controversy because it challenged existing beliefs about the creation of humankind. The spread of Darwin’s theory caused a division within America because it struck the nation during a stage of immense…

Brian Switek, the author of How Giraffes Became Winner by a neck, writes about the evolution of the giraffe and its neck length. The article starts off by explaining the theories of Darwin and Wallace compared to Lamarck. In most textbook cases, Darwin and Wallace are correct, since textbooks usually only show the modern giraffe, Giraffa Camelopardalis, but in this situation, Lamarck’s theory is more correct. The example of the question would be, picture a proto giraffe looking up in a tree for…

Expected Progeny Differences (EPD) Analysis Maddie Franke Introduction Expected Progeny Differences, or EPD’s, have been around for over a decade and are still used as a major asset for the beef industry today. The discovery of EPD’s first came to be when cattle producers began to notice that the parent’s offspring produced many of the same performance traits as the parents themselves. What first began as visual appraisal evaluations has now grown into a complex system, using pedigrees,…

Biologists have done many studies concerning guppies. Guppies are one of the world's most widely distributed tropical fishes, and one of the most popular freshwater fish species. These fishes tend to live in tropical lakes and rivers. In addition, Guppies have a wide color variation. This led Biologists to wonder what was caused the wide coloration of Guppies. Biologists collected data about different types of guppies and where they lived. After observing and collecting data about the guppies,…

Human evolution is a key theory in anthropology, particularly within the sub-fields of biological anthropology and archaeology. The theory of evolution describes the process of a gradual change in traits in a species over time. Human evolution describes the slow process that led to the rise of anatomically modern humans—who we are today. During this process, traits were altered in order to adapt to environmental situations and needs. The name of our species is Homo sapiens sapiens. Out of…

Fossils are important source of information to understanding the evolution of organisms. Without fossils people can only speculate how animals evolve or they can look at some animals that have visible evolutions between their species. When we look at fossil records we can see the big picture of how different animals were able to adapt to their ever changing surroundings. Darwin was able to see the visible changes between his finches, but looking at fossil records of the birds he could have seen…

1 Social Darwinism is a theory of natural selection to social, political, and economical issues. Survival of the fittest is caused to this. All of this means that people should being doing things naturally, without help from people. Social Darwinists would have disapproved of anything the government did to help protect the weak. They would have disapproved of measures meant to prevent small businesses from being shut down by monopoly. The Darwinists would have disliked that people got minimum…