Thoughts w/ Casey

 First off, inbreeding  is "the production of offspring  from the mating  or breeding of individuals or organisms  that are closely  r elated genetically ," according to Wikipedia.org. This means that inbreeding can occur between members of the same family and because of this mating, there is a higher change of gaining recessive mutations. Many disorders related to inbreeding comes from the higher likelihood of recessive disorders.  Now, let's discuss some possibly benefits of inbreeding that could result in assortative mating. Assortative mating occurs when individuals with similar phenotypes mate with one another more frequently than the expected pattern of random mating. For example, if a certain trait is beneficial in a population and enhances an individual's overall fitness, two individuals with that trait are more likely to mate and create offspring with the same set of traits. This pattern of mating ensures that the offspring of a popu...

 Hey guys, since there is no actual prompt for the blog post this week and it is not required, I thought I would just write about something that is very interesting to me.  Anyways, I remember talking about this specific story in a class last year, but I cannot remember which one. Nevertheless, over the past 150 years, scientists have examined the reproductive organs of 814 cricket frogs in Illinois. The discoveries were horrifying. As a result of the excessive amounts of DDT being used to kill crop-destroying insects such as mosquitos, many frogs in Illinois have developed both male and female organs due to the DDT runoff into the swamps. Scientists have hypothesized that DDT had an anti-estrogen affect in these frogs, which reduced the amount of amount of females in the population and damaged their reproductive organs, causing the frog population to decline. In addition, the highest rates of intersex frogs that were found occurred between 1946 and 1959, the same time period ...

First of all, in order to know whether or not mutation rates evolve, one must first recognize Darwin's postulates:  (1) Individuals within species are variable; (2) some of these variations are heritable ; and (3) individuals that reproduce the most are those with the most favorable variations.   I am mostly restating these postulates so I do not forget them when I writing, not because I think you guys don't know what they are. Anyways, back to the main point. My first instinct tells me that mutation rates cannot evolve. Instead, certain mutations become more common because they benefit the individual's fitness and nature simply selects for  them. However, after further research, I have found that mutation rates can indeed evolve, especially when a cell is under extreme amounts of stress. This stress can cause the DNA repair mechanisms to undergo damage, which leads to more mutations. In addition, mutation rates can evolve...

 For me, fitness is the ability of an organism to thrive in its environment given its physiological characteristics. This "thriving" can be the ability of an organism to have the largest proportion of the food or have success in terms of reproduction. In a natural population, I would define fitness as an organism's ability to survive and reproduce compared to other members of that same population. If the death rate of a population is already very high, an individual who has high fitness in that organization may still have high chance of dying, but not as high as other members in the population. For example, a cheetah with shorter than average legs may have reduced fitness due to the length of stride they are capable of producing. This phenotype could slow them down when they are trying to catch prey. On the other hand, a cheetah with longer, more muscular legs may have the ability to run faster and longer, assuring that they can catch their prey and survive. Due to the hi...