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What is Free Evolution?

Free evolution is the idea that the natural processes that organisms go through can cause them to develop over time. This includes the appearance and growth of new species.

Numerous examples have been offered of this, including different varieties of stickleback fish that can live in either salt or fresh water, as well as walking stick insect varieties that prefer specific host plants. These are mostly reversible traits, however, cannot explain fundamental changes in basic body plans.

Evolution through Natural Selection

Scientists have been fascinated by the evolution of all the living creatures that inhabit our planet for many centuries. Charles Darwin's natural selection is the best-established explanation. This happens when individuals who are better-adapted survive and reproduce more than those who are less well-adapted. As time passes, the number of individuals who are well-adapted grows and eventually develops into a new species.

Natural selection is an ongoing process that involves the interaction of three elements including inheritance, variation, and reproduction. Variation is caused by mutation and sexual reproduction both of which increase the genetic diversity of a species. Inheritance refers the transmission of a person’s genetic traits, including recessive and dominant genes, to their offspring. Reproduction is the process of producing viable, fertile offspring. This can be accomplished through sexual or asexual methods.

Natural selection is only possible when all of these factors are in harmony. If, for instance, a dominant gene allele makes an organism reproduce and last longer than the recessive gene then the dominant allele is more prevalent in a group. However, if the gene confers an unfavorable survival advantage or reduces fertility, it will be eliminated from the population. The process is self reinforcing which means that the organism with an adaptive trait will live and reproduce much more than one with a maladaptive characteristic. The more offspring that an organism has, the greater its fitness, which is measured by its capacity to reproduce itself and live. Individuals with favorable traits, like having a long neck in Giraffes, or the bright white color patterns on male peacocks are more likely than others to live and reproduce, which will eventually lead to them becoming the majority.

Natural selection is only a force for populations, not individual organisms. This is a major distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution which states that animals acquire characteristics through use or neglect. For example, if a giraffe's neck gets longer through stretching to reach for prey its offspring will inherit a larger neck. The differences in neck size between generations will increase until the giraffe becomes unable to reproduce with other giraffes.

Evolution through Genetic Drift

In genetic drift, the alleles at a gene may be at different frequencies within a population by chance events. Eventually, one of them will attain fixation (become so widespread that it can no longer be eliminated through natural selection) and other alleles will fall to lower frequency. This can lead to dominance at the extreme. The other alleles are eliminated, and heterozygosity decreases to zero. In a small population it could lead to the complete elimination of recessive alleles. This scenario is called the bottleneck effect. It is typical of the evolutionary process that occurs when an enormous number of individuals move to form a population.

A phenotypic bottleneck may occur when survivors of a disaster such as an epidemic or a massive hunting event, are concentrated within a narrow area. The surviving individuals are likely to be homozygous for the dominant allele, which means that they will all share the same phenotype, and consequently have the same fitness characteristics. This situation could be caused by war, earthquakes, or even plagues. Regardless of the cause, the genetically distinct population that remains could be prone to genetic drift.

Walsh Lewens and Ariew utilize a "purely outcome-oriented" definition of drift as any departure from the expected values for variations in fitness. They cite a famous example of twins that are genetically identical, have identical phenotypes but one is struck by lightning and dies, while the other lives and reproduces.


This kind of drift could play a very important part in the evolution of an organism. But, it's not the only method to develop. The most common alternative is a process called natural selection, in which phenotypic variation in an individual is maintained through mutation and migration.

Stephens argues that there is a big distinction between treating drift as a force or an underlying cause, and treating other causes of evolution such as mutation, selection and migration as forces or causes. He claims that a causal-process account of drift allows us separate it from other forces and this distinction is essential. He further argues that drift has both a direction, i.e., it tends to reduce heterozygosity. ???? ???? has a size that is determined by population size.

Evolution through Lamarckism

In high school, students take biology classes, they are frequently introduced to the work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 - 1829). His theory of evolution is generally called "Lamarckism" and it asserts that simple organisms evolve into more complex organisms through the inherited characteristics that are a result of the natural activities of an organism usage, use and disuse. Lamarckism is typically illustrated by an image of a giraffe stretching its neck longer to reach the higher branches in the trees. This could cause giraffes' longer necks to be passed on to their offspring who would grow taller.

Lamarck was a French zoologist and, in his opening lecture for his course on invertebrate zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris on the 17th May 1802, he presented a groundbreaking concept that radically challenged the conventional wisdom about organic transformation. According to Lamarck, living creatures evolved from inanimate material through a series of gradual steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest this, but he was widely thought of as the first to provide the subject a thorough and general overview.

The most popular story is that Charles Darwin's theory on evolution by natural selection and Lamarckism fought during the 19th century. Darwinism ultimately prevailed and led to what biologists call the Modern Synthesis. The theory argues that acquired traits can be passed down through generations and instead argues organisms evolve by the selective action of environment factors, including Natural Selection.

Although Lamarck endorsed the idea of inheritance through acquired characters and his contemporaries also offered a few words about this idea, it was never an integral part of any of their theories about evolution. This is partly because it was never scientifically tested.

However, it has been more than 200 years since Lamarck was born and, in the age of genomics there is a vast amount of evidence to support the heritability of acquired characteristics. This is referred to as "neo Lamarckism", or more often epigenetic inheritance. It is a form of evolution that is just as valid as the more popular Neo-Darwinian model.

Evolution through the process of adaptation

One of the most widespread misconceptions about evolution is that it is driven by a sort of struggle to survive. In reality, this notion is inaccurate and overlooks the other forces that are driving evolution. The fight for survival can be more precisely described as a fight to survive in a specific environment, which may be a struggle that involves not only other organisms but as well the physical environment.

To understand how evolution functions it is beneficial to understand what is adaptation. It refers to a specific characteristic that allows an organism to live and reproduce in its environment. It could be a physical feature, such as feathers or fur. It could also be a trait of behavior such as moving towards shade during hot weather or moving out to avoid the cold at night.

The survival of an organism is dependent on its ability to draw energy from the environment and interact with other organisms and their physical environments. The organism must have the right genes to create offspring, and must be able to locate sufficient food and other resources. Furthermore, the organism needs to be capable of reproducing itself at a high rate within its niche.

???? ??? ?? , together with mutations and gene flow can result in a shift in the proportion of different alleles in a population’s gene pool. As time passes, this shift in allele frequencies can result in the emergence of new traits and eventually new species.

Many of the features that we admire about animals and plants are adaptations, like lung or gills for removing oxygen from the air, feathers or fur to protect themselves and long legs for running away from predators, and camouflage to hide. However, a proper understanding of adaptation requires paying attention to the distinction between the physiological and behavioral traits.

Physiological adaptations, such as thick fur or gills, are physical traits, whereas behavioral adaptations, such as the tendency to seek out friends or to move into the shade in hot weather, are not. Furthermore it is important to note that lack of planning does not mean that something is an adaptation. more info here to consider the implications of a choice even if it seems to be rational, could make it inflexible.

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