ANT 101 - 001
Evolution in Action
In his article named “Evolution in Action”, Weiner begins the acceptance of evolution in America by comparing Darwin and his wife Emma. Weiner talks about a halt in evolutionary research after Darwin's death. Darwin thought that evolution took place for hundreds or thousands of years, and that human life cannot bear witness to it. This is until evolutionary biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, began to watch finches on the Galapagos Islands, as Darwin did. Grants witnessed the evolution that happened before his eyes (through differences in the finch beak shape). This is the real-time evolution of a completely new species in the wild. He mentioned that it took only two generation to happen. At the same time, with Grants' discovery, many field projects in various habitats around the world have begun to be carried out. Soon, biologists began to realize that natural selection might be fast enough to track evolution.
Weiner says that the development of new species will not take long. He cited the red salmon that came with the rivers after the ice age. Red salmon have succeeded in developing their species completely in a short period of 10 years. Weiner also mentions peppered moths as another example. Industrial pollution created by humans speaks of the rapid evolution of peppered moths against the environment. He says that the researchers have no knowledge about how peppered moths achieved it. It causes a great impact on the life forms of human behaviors and nature. Scientists have discovered a gene that occurs the beak of finch birds.
Scientists will be able to directly interfere with the molecular structure of this gene to shape the size of their beaks when the finches are still babies. This means that finches will have to continue their lives, not according to their natural evolutionary process, but according to the results of their intervention in the human species. In another example, as a result of the extinction of bighorn rams by hunters in North America, they caused the hunters to experience shortages in the quarries. In short, as a result of human intervention on nature, plants and animals are the most affected species.
Written by Erdogan Akbiyik
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