Monday, April 12, 2010
Natural vs. Artificial Selection
Since the first organisms, natural selection has sculpted the organisms to become more idealized in there environment. In chapter 5, "The Engine of Evolution," Jerry Coyne wrote that "Natural selection, as we find, is everywhere, scrutinizing individuals, culling the unfit and promoting the genes of the fitter. It can create intricate adaptations, sometimes in surprisingly little time." At the same time, we are learning to understand our world. We have previously experimented in influencing bacteria to generate that totally awesome green glow. We can artificially alter strands of DNA to generate more prosperous products such as increasing crop yields and producing synthetic medicine. Which means do you believe is more viable in the production of future more evolved species? Natural Selection or Artificial Selection and whether you deem that either humans or nature should have the final say in evolution. Please provide evidence and support your claims.
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Although artificial selection by humans will somewhat influence a few organism's evolution, I believe that natural selection in nature will have a greater affect on the overall scale of evolution in the years to come. However, much of the environmental pressure that cause natural selection in nature may be influenced by the actions of humans.
ReplyDeleteThe influence of artificial selection is limited to the few organisms that humans work on. There are millions of organisms on Earth, which is way more than human influence can ever approach. Even though artificial selection is limited in extent, I do think that human actions are causing much environmental pressures which leads to natural selection and evolution.
Human actions such as the burning of fossil fuels or deforestation is causing global climate change which is known as global warming. With global warming comes pressures put on various species around the world. In the past couple of years, species have already gone extinct, which can mean that natural selection has begun the pruning process of evolution. According Dr. Parmesan of the University of Texas, "species are not evolving fast enough to prevent extinction." In fact, in the 21st century, over 10 species have already gone extinct such as the Baiji Dolphin, the West African Black Rhino, the Golden Toad, and the Holdridge's Toad; plus, many more species are now in an extinction vortex and likely to disappear in the next few years. The cause of many of the species's extinctions is global warming, a consequence of largely human actions such as pollution and aerosol use.
Finally, there is a major difference between artificial and natural selection in terms of evolutionary quality. Natural selection will create organisms with traits best suited for the environment while artificial selection will result in organisms with traits that humans want.
Sources:
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2006/11/14/biology/
http://dodosgone.blogspot.com/
I agree with Frank that for the most part, natural selection is generally better than artificial selection.
ReplyDeleteNatural selection will always choose the traits that best suit organisms to survive and reproduce. Human's artificial selection will usually choose what humans deem the best traits, whether they be the biggest pig or sweetest fruit, as described by library.thinkquest.org (http://library.thinkquest.org/C0118084/Gene/Genetic_variation/artificialselection.html).
This applies to the theme of science and technology, which is used to perform artificial selection.