A Study On Rapid Evolution - 1127 Words

4. Introduction: a. I have learned that rapid evolution has expanded exceedingly. Zuk shows this with an example of the average size of fish being way much smaller due to fishermen causing the fish to reproduce earlier than they normally do. Due to this, evolution regulated the growth and size of the fish variously, thus their sexual maturity became different. b. Another thing that I have learned from the introduction is that evolving quickly is not always a good thing. When evolution occurs too fast, there’s only a small percentage of the population that survives while the rest of the population disintegrates. An example of this is the Black Death, where the death rates were about 95%. Thus, only the fittest were able to survive the†¦show more content†¦I was able to understand that we are not at the peak of evolution due to this, and we still have time to evolve more. Chapter 2: a. One thing that caught my interest was learning that due to the modification in our diet with agriculture, disease became more prominent. This shows what happened when we decided to go to crops and civilization for our source of food versus going for the traditional hunter-gatherer role our ancestors once possessed. I thought this was a very interesting fact to learn. b. Another interesting thing is that the level of fitness for individuals could possibly get worse in the future. This is because our population is â€Å"stuck† and not adapting to the environments we are in. An effect of this could mean that we are not suited for the environment we are in, and we still have to evolve more so we can be more adaptive. Chapter 3: a. Some interesting information I learned was that evolution can occur quickly in the wild. Zuk demonstrated an example of this with a species of crickets that she had observed before. In fewer than 5 years, the male crickets had lost their ability to produce sound due to the rapid evolution of parasitic flies affecting the apparatus thus rendering the males. This was an example of one of the fastest cases of evolution. Knowing this allows me to understand that evolution occurring more quickly for one species could affect the evolution of another species. b. I