Why Everyone Is Talking About Free Evolution Today

What is Free Evolution?

Free evolution is the concept that the natural processes that organisms go through can lead to their development over time. This includes the creation of new species and the transformation of the appearance of existing ones.

Numerous examples have been offered of this, such as different varieties of fish called sticklebacks that can be found in salt or fresh water, and walking stick insect varieties that prefer specific host plants. These reversible traits however, are not able to be the reason for fundamental changes in body plans.

Evolution by Natural Selection

Scientists have been fascinated by the evolution of all the living organisms that inhabit our planet for many centuries. Charles Darwin's natural selectivity is the best-established explanation. This is because individuals who are better-adapted have more success in reproduction and survival than those who are less well-adapted. Over time, a population of well-adapted individuals increases and eventually creates a new species.

Natural selection is a cyclical process that involves the interaction of three elements including inheritance, variation, and reproduction. Sexual reproduction and mutations increase the genetic diversity of a species. Inheritance is the passing of a person's genetic characteristics to their offspring that includes dominant and recessive alleles. Reproduction is the process of producing fertile, viable offspring which includes both sexual and asexual methods.

Natural selection is only possible when all these elements are in harmony. If, for example, a dominant gene allele makes an organism reproduce and survive more than the recessive allele, then the dominant allele is more prevalent in a population. If the allele confers a negative advantage to survival or lowers the fertility of the population, it will disappear. The process is self reinforcing which means that the organism with an adaptive characteristic will live and reproduce more quickly than those with a maladaptive trait. The more offspring an organism produces, the greater its fitness, which is measured by its capacity to reproduce and survive. People with desirable traits, like having a longer neck in giraffes and bright white color patterns in male peacocks, are more likely to survive and have offspring, which means they will make up the majority of the population over time.

Natural selection is only a factor in populations and not on individuals. This is a significant distinction from the Lamarckian evolution theory, which states that animals acquire traits due to use or lack of use. If a giraffe expands its neck to catch prey, and the neck becomes longer, then the children will inherit this characteristic. The differences in neck length between generations will persist until the giraffe's neck gets too long that it can not breed with other giraffes.

Evolution by Genetic Drift

In genetic drift, alleles within a gene can be at different frequencies in a group through random events. At some point, one will attain fixation (become so widespread that it is unable to be eliminated by natural selection), while other alleles fall to lower frequencies. This could lead to dominance in extreme. The other alleles are essentially eliminated, and heterozygosity is reduced to zero. In a small group, this could result in the complete elimination the recessive gene. This is known as the bottleneck effect and is typical of the evolutionary process that occurs whenever an enormous number of individuals move to form a group.

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

Walsh, Lewens, and Ariew use Lewens, Walsh and Ariew employ a "purely outcome-oriented" definition of drift as any departure from the expected values of differences in fitness. They cite the famous example of twins that are genetically identical and share the same phenotype, but one is struck by lightning and dies, while the other continues to reproduce.

This kind of drift could be vital to the evolution of an entire species. It's not the only method for evolution. Natural selection is the main alternative, where mutations and migrations maintain the phenotypic diversity of a population.

Stephens asserts that there is a vast difference between treating the phenomenon of drift as an agent or cause and treating other causes like migration and selection as causes and forces. He claims that a causal process account of drift allows us to distinguish it from other forces, and this distinction is crucial. He also claims that drift has a direction, that is it tends to reduce heterozygosity. It also has a magnitude, that is determined by the size of population.

Evolution by Lamarckism

When 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 via the inheritance of characteristics which result from the organism's natural actions, use and disuse. Lamarckism is typically illustrated with the image of a giraffe stretching its neck to reach higher up in the trees. This process would cause giraffes to give their longer necks to their offspring, which then grow even taller.

Lamarck, a French Zoologist, introduced a revolutionary concept in his 17 May 1802 opening lecture at the Museum of Natural History of Paris. He challenged previous thinking on organic transformation. In his opinion, living things had evolved from inanimate matter through a series of gradual steps. Lamarck wasn't the first to suggest this but he was considered to be the first to provide the subject a thorough and general treatment.

The most popular story is that Lamarckism was an opponent to Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary natural selection and that the two theories battled it out in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually prevailed and led to what biologists refer to as the Modern Synthesis. The theory argues that acquired traits are passed down from generation to generation and instead, it claims that organisms evolve through the influence of environment factors, including Natural Selection.

While Lamarck endorsed the idea of inheritance through acquired characters and his contemporaries paid lip-service to this notion, it was never a central element in any of their evolutionary theories.  Read Even more  is due in part to the fact that it was never validated scientifically.

But it is now more than 200 years since Lamarck was born and in the age of genomics there is a vast body of evidence supporting the possibility of inheritance of acquired traits. This is referred to as "neo Lamarckism", or more generally epigenetic inheritance. It is a variant of evolution that is as relevant as the more popular neo-Darwinian model.

Evolution through adaptation

One of the most popular misconceptions about evolution is that it is a result of a kind of struggle for survival. This view is inaccurate and overlooks the other forces that determine the rate of evolution. The fight for survival can be more precisely described as a fight to survive in a specific environment, which could involve not only other organisms, but as well the physical environment.

To understand how evolution operates, it is helpful to consider what adaptation is. Adaptation refers to any particular feature that allows an organism to survive and reproduce in its environment. It could be a physical structure like fur or feathers. Or it can be a characteristic of behavior such as moving towards shade during the heat, or coming out to avoid the cold at night.

The survival of an organism depends on its ability to draw energy from the surrounding environment and interact with other organisms and their physical environments. The organism needs to have the right genes to produce offspring, and it should be able to locate sufficient food and other resources. Furthermore, the organism needs to be able to reproduce itself at an optimal rate within its environment.

These factors, together with gene flow and mutations, can lead to an alteration in the ratio of different alleles in the population's gene pool. This shift in the frequency of alleles can lead to the emergence of new traits, and eventually new species as time passes.

A lot of the traits we find appealing in plants and animals are adaptations. For example, lungs or gills that extract oxygen from the air feathers and fur as insulation, long legs to run away from predators, and camouflage to hide. To understand adaptation it is essential to differentiate between physiological and behavioral traits.

Physical characteristics like the thick fur and gills are physical characteristics. The behavioral adaptations aren't like the tendency of animals to seek out companionship or move into the shade during hot weather. It is also important to remember that a the absence of planning doesn't result in an adaptation. Inability to think about the implications of a choice even if it appears to be rational, could make it unadaptive.