[ExI] Is Evolution more random mutation than adaptation?

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Fri May 8 18:19:02 UTC 2015


On 8 May 2015 at 17:08, Ivor Peter Brians  wrote:
> Decades ago in high school biology class we were taught that, "Species
> do not change to survive but survive because they happened to change."
>


I think the original researchers are saying that evolution is more
complex than that.

Adaptation and speciation are going on continuously. Adaptation makes
changes so that a species is more suited to the current environment.
But the researchers are claiming that it is the gradual accumulation
of small random mutations that lead to a new species over a time span
of about 2 million years.

This scenario takes place in an environment where climate change,
volcano eruptions, asteroid impacts, etc. wipe out many successful
species. If all the plant life is killed for years, many species have
no time to adapt, so they go extinct. The ancestors of humans came
very close to extinction several times when they dwindled to small
groups.

Perhaps it helps to be a 'lucky' species.

BillK



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