adaptation

Monday, November 9, 2015

2:58 PM

Product of evolution by natural selection

An organism becomes adapted to environment by natural selection
Trait or feature that increases fitness of organism in environment
Better fitness in environment

Adaptation to the abiotic environment

Two aspects of environment
Abiotic environment
Without biology
Non living part
Such features as temperature, rainfall
Physical conditions of one sort or another
Selection occur to conditions due to this aspect of the environment
Cold environment
Mammals with long fur - adaptation to cold environment - survive longer
Long fur - adaptation to long environment

Biotic component of environment

Living part of environment

Other living things

Can fall in 2 general categories
Not members of your own species
Are members of your own species
Adaptations are rather different

Other species in environment Species don't affect you in any way - no selection pressure to adapt to another
species out there that doesn't affect you
Species competetors - eating same food your eating
Predators of yours - want to eat you
Other species - mutualists - engage in positive interaction with you
Plants and polinators - mutualistic relationshi
Adaptations between plants and polinators that deal with that interaction
Camoflauge in insects
Peppered moth case
Peppered and black form of moth
Moth camoflauge in environment
Deal with another species - birds
Members of own species For example - most of the interactions with members of your own species that is
important has to do with attracting and keeping mates
Sexual selection - involves adaptations associated with aquiring and keeping mate
Antlers on male deer (bucks) are an adaptation for fighting other males to win
mates

Selection and adaptation related to other species

Adapting to abiotic - non living
Any adaptation - longer fur
Doesn't change abiotic environment
Still as cold
But changes better able to survive in that environment
Different case when environment is naother species
Dynamic evolving entity
Preditor prey interaction
One is predator one is pray
Preditor and pray adapting to each other
Each can be changing
Pray evolved to run faster
Selection on predators to run even faster to keep up with prey
Situations as co evolution
2 species predator and prey co-evolving so change in one brings about a change in
the other as well

Aspects - members of own species

Sexual selection
No difference than natural selection
Selection on features associated with aquiring mates
Look at how animals aquire mates
One things we see
Females choose males to mate with

In other cases males fight with each other - whoever wins gets right to females
In humans - unclear which it is
Look at some examples of mating systems and what products those are in sexual
selection
Females choose what male to mate with
Often time result of sexual selection are ornaments
Males in this context to be chosen by females
Male cosen by female - genes passed on to next generation
Nothing attractive about him - no mate and genes don't get passed on
Females choose males
Males have a lot of ornamentation - male peacock
Has giant feathery array that he displays and walks around attracting attention of
females and females mate with him
Contrast this with where males fight with each other
Adaptations that result are not ornaments - armaments
Win fights with males
Those sorts of features selected for them
Animal - elephant seal
Male elephent seal rearing up
Females around him
Male 4 times as large
Where mating system works
Bull elephant seals fight with each other
And male wins fight
Has harum of females he mates with

See in these male elephant seals

Have protruding canine teeth - rake foes
See that there is trunk like thing on elephant seal
Male has but tno female
Elongated nose that elephant seal blow into to make trumpet sound - similar to
elephant
Used as context of fighting
Females choose males or males fight
Sexual dimorphism
Males and females look different
Bird species

Similar kinds of environments

Produce similar types of organisms
Convergent evolution
Body shape and fins of shark dolphins and penguines
Plants in african deserts that look like the cacti of american deserts

One things you notice - look at body shape of all three - have basically submarine
type of shape
Narrow at front
Broad in between
Narrow at back
Particular shape is very useful for moving through water in efficient way
Blunt front - resistance through water
Submarines have same shape - engineers found out best way to move through
water without drag
Porpose and shark - fin on top to stabalize
Not really closely related at all
Shark - fish
Penguine - bird
Porpose - mammal

Body shape and fin - not features because they share common ancestor
Features they evolved independently because particular environment selected
features that allow them to move through that environment in efficient way

Stem part - green often time spines on them

If we then went to deserts in africa - those are cacti - same as cactus in africa
Look very similar
In fact these plants not related at all
Different plant families
Reason they look alike
Not share common ancester
But look that way because they live in desert environments
Selection pressures on organism
Adaptations very similar
One of features of adaptation
In desert - dry and hot
How they conserve moisture
Very easy to lose moisture through leaves
They lsot their leaves
Dont photosynthesis through leaves
Cuts down on losing water

Very suculant and if they didn't have thorns ainmal would eat them

Nature of adaptations
Organisms adapted to environments
Shouldn't imagine adaptation is perfect
Organisms can only adapt in ways that are possible for them
Don't see animals with wheels - not within realm of posibilities
See when we look at them
Look more like contraptions than elegantly designed device
Adaptations and see how they were built from bits and pieces of things that
organisms already have
Middle ear bones of mammals

These bones very important for transmitting sound into inner ear and signals sent to
brain
Not know names of bones
Connects with ear drum
Sounds come in and hits ear drum

Ear drum vibrates

And bone moves
Hitched to next bone
Also moves
And hinged to next bone and that also moves
Creates movement in fluid in inner ear
And movement of fluid movess little air cells in inner ear
And sends off singals to the brain and we interpret that as sound
Where do earbones come from
Pretty good record how they came to be involved in hearing
Go back and look at fossils
Reptiles to mammals
In course see changes in skull that create these earbones
Bones already present in reptile jaw
Just modified to become middle ear bones
Upperleft
Reptilian jaw
On right - color code for types of bones in jaw
Reptiles - difficulty eating
Can't chew and tear it up
Snakes can't chew - swallow whole
Adaptations in mammals
Development of muscular and bigger lower jaw
In course - little bones - yellow and green - hinging of reptile jaw - not hinging of
mammal jaw

Little bones lying around - at that point that these bones further evolved to become
part of hearing aparatus
Contraption
Pieces of what was already there
Not being used anymore
And therefore taken over and used for different purpose (for hearing)
Ear bones - birds - constructed in different way
Hear better than animals
Bones built from available materials

Certain compromises involved

Can't be good at everything
Good at one thing - not good at antoher
Tail length in male birds
Number of species
Long tails very attractive
Sexual selection
Males have longer tails than other tales choosen by females
Too long - can be detrament - difficult to fly vulnerable to other species
Compromise selection for to find mate and against long tale for how it can fly
Very long tale - mating displays - featured prominantly
Female - has long tails but not near as long as male
Experiments with other species
Lengthened tale - those birds very attractive to females but downside to having
long tail and can't fly as well

Feathers on birds
Important for flight
But think about how we could have evolved from something without feathers to
something with feathers
Difficult to see how this could evolved
Evolution of feathers
Not feathers like today
Something small and feather like - not useful for flying
Evolution of feathers - different
Didn't evolve for flight
Probably evolved for keeping - reptile warm
Feathers serve that function today for birds
Down blankets and pillows
Insulating properties of feathers
Products in china
Reptile group related to birds
Small feathers used for keeping warm and not of any value involved in flight
Once this adaptation occurs
Once they are formed and evolved for purposes of that
Once they get large enough - now have for coasting or gliding
Further selection to improve that adaptation to improve flight
Examptation
Feathers
Not evolved for flight but for something else and taken over and used for flight

Think about organisms evolving we know that natural selection works on

recombinations of genetic traits
And sometimes when we think about this
Think well what can selection really do to take organism down new pathway
Think of something that sorts out stuff already there and puts it together in other
ways
How do we get something completely different
Some of these changes come about through mutations
To get some changes you need to have lots of mutations or possible to get
mutations on few or one gene to produce novel feature in organism
Different kinds of genes
Hair is blond or brown or black
Superficial genes - structural genes
Genes - regulatory genes
Involved in development
Turn on and turn off at certain periods of time

Right hand side - see at top - skull of adult chimp

On bottom

Skull of adult human

See there are significant differences in shapes of skulls
Chimp skull
Mutch bigger skull relative to brain case size
Human - larger brain case size relative to large
How did this things come about
Genes involved in creating different skull shape
Look at chimp and human baby skull
Skulls very siilar
Hard pressed to know if it was from chimp or human
During course of development in chimp
Portions that grow quite a bit - lower jaw brain area doesn't grow much at all
Human infant skull compared to adult
See that basically all portions of skull grow about same amount
Greater growth in jaw area but rest doesn't grow much at all
How much each part of skull changed over time
What's responsible for these changes?
Appears that just a few genes involved in these differences
In chimps going from baby to adult
Genes that turn on to allow jaw to grow
In human those aren't turned on for that long of time
Human adult skull blown up version of baby skull
Adult chimp different than baby chimp skull
Changes occur over short - hundreds or thousands of years - short time

Peppered moth