Essay on My Journey to a BSc in Nursing: Exploring Human Development & Natural Selection

Introduction

My name is XYZ. I am taking a Bachelors of Science Degree in Nursing. I am taking this course because I need to develop a firm foundation on human development, culture as well as changes that have happened throughout the world in the past and present. I am interested in getting a proper understanding of the sociocultural, biological, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology.

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The theory of Natural Selection

Charles Darwin postulated the theory of natural selection in 1859 to explain how only the best-suited species survive the harsh environment. For example, through natural selection, the slight variations that are considered useful for survival in species are preserved and these organizations that survive reproduce offspring's that have more advanced or adaptative features for survival (Ozay Kose & Keskin, 2015). The most important part of this theory is that it relies on the adaptation of current species and the production of new and distinct species that are best suited for the course of evolution.

The process starts with variation or adaptation and ends with reproduction or speciation. Under natural selection, the weak or least suited species die of natural causes such as diseases or predation or hunger while the best-suited spies continue to survive. Most animals develop adaptative features that they pass to their offspring through genetic makeup and the resulting offspring are much better suited for the future environment.

Adaptation as an Example of Natural Selection

The article was written by Reid, Proestou, Clark, Warren, Colbourne, Shaw, Karchner, Hahn, Nacci, Oleksiak, Crawford, and Whitehead. According to Colautti & Lau (2015), the process of natural selection starts with a variation where the organism starts to exhibit specific and individual variation. Specific organism within the wild fish population will develop unique appearance, behaviors, body size, color, voice or many or few offspring. The second step is through inheritances where the organism passes some unique traits to the offspring (Reid et al., 2016). The genetic traits are heritable while those that are influenced by the condition in the environment are least heritable. After inheritances, the wild fish struggle for the fittest because most the rate of reproduction and population growth increases. When the resources cannot sustain them, some organism is eliminated because of the struggle for scarce resources. The final stage if the differential survival and reproduction among the species within the population. Those with strongly heritable traits survive and produce more offspring while those with weak traits due off.

According to the article on the dynamics of adaptation by natural selection, the articles argue that deign the first 2000 generations, the beneficial mutation had large effective sizes which resulted in fitness trajectories. However, as times passed, the speed of improvement was significantly slowed down. The decline in the rate of improvement means that the fitness of survival is approaching an asymptote. The competition between the organism of different lineages with varying beneficial mutation leads to survival or only the organisms with the best adaptation for survival (Reid et al., 2016).

Conclusion

When adaption is repeated over generations, the organism undergoes multiple mutations with a larger percentage of the population evolving into hypermutate phenotypes increasing the rate of fitness improvement. The latest compensatory changes reduce the overall mutability creating a difference between the creation of beneficial mutants that would be the next survivors but the progeny will have deleterious mutations.

References

Ozay Kose, E., & Keskin, B. (2015). Understanding Adaptation and Natural Selection: Common Misconceptions. International Journal of Academic Research In Education, 1(2). Doi: 10.17985/ijare.53146

Reid, N., Proestou, D., Clark, B., Warren, W., Colbourne, J., & Shaw, J. et al. (2016). The genomic landscape of rapid repeated evolutionary adaptation to toxic pollution in wildfish. Science, 354(6317), 1305-1308. Doi: 10.1126/science. aah4993