Exam 1

Maia Gotthold K00903277 ([email protected]) login: fishfly

Question 1
Charles Darwin (was an English naturalist who, in an attempt to explain the origin of all species,
introduced his Theory of Evolution, one of the most important works of scientific study to date.
In his Thesis, presented in his book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”,
Darwin proposed that species change over time, and that all species come from a shared,
common ancestor. Each species has accumulated its unique set of genes from the shared
ancestor over a very long period of time, and species branch into two over time, and so on. This
event of branching and splitting and the passage of genes, creates a multi-level “tree” of life that
links all species together. This process is what we call Evolution.
The mechanism Darwin proposed for the process previously explained is Natural Selection.
He claims that in the struggle of existence for all living species, the ones who will survive will be
those who are able to adapt and overcome the environment’s conditions, reproducing and
evolving. The imbalance between the size of the population and the environment’s capacity to
support them, will result in a competition for resources, since they are limited in nature. Only the
most capable ones, those whose abilities allow them to thrive, and know how to take advantage
of the few resources that the environment offers, will survive.
Darwin describes an organism’s fitness as it’s faculty to reproduce and survive in its
environment. Fitness, he claims, is the result of the organism’s ability to adapt to their
environment’s conditions over time, changing and evolving their behaviour, anatomy, or
physiological characteristics. Survival of the fittest, as Darwin called it, means that those with
high level of fitness will survive and reproduce, and the ones with a low fitness level, won’t. This
is all thanks to natural selection, where those with inherited traits that strengthen their fitness will
leave more capable offsprings, who will inherit the traits, which will become more common in the
next generations, and over generations, the species will adapt to its environment.
Thus, species alive today descended (with modifications) from species that lived in the past and
a common ancestor, which makes them all connected from one another. Every organism alive
today had to adapt and evolve in order to live in today’s environmental conditions.
The combination of Darwin’s theory of evolution and Mendel's findings on heredity came to be
known as Modern Synthesis (or central dogma)
Joining Darwin’s idea of evolution and how traits are inherited via genes from generation to
generation, and Mendel’s finding about genetics, and how traits can be passed to offsprings, it
was made possible to explain and understand the genetic basis of evolutionary changes in the
population.
According to the modern synthesis, change in populations of organisms and thus in gene pools
are caused by gene flow, mutation and genetic drift, not just by natural selection.
The central dogma is the flow of information inside genes (from DNA to RNA to proteins) and it
represents the relationship between the genes and the phenotype they control. Understanding
how it functions can help demonstrate relationships among species based on how closely they
share nucleotide sequences.
Mendel describes the way in which traits are transmitted from generation to generation through
his principles of inheritance. He claims that an organism’s internal nature (genotype) cannot be
inferred by simply observing its external nature (phenotype). Some inherited traits could be
hidden in one generation but reemerge in the next.
An offspring will inherit different genes from each parent, where only the dominant physical
versions of genes will be apparent.
In conclusion, it can be said that evolution is the process by which species change over time.
Populations grow and overcome the environment’s capacity, therefore resulting in a lack of
resources for the survival of the whole, which leads to competition. Variety exists inside
populations, and offsprings from the fittest members inherit their parent’s characteristics. And
through natural selection, nature selects which offspring survive and reproduce.
The five forces that drive evolution are natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift, mutation and
non-random mating.

Question 2
Populations are groups of individuals that share a gene pool. Communities grow thanks to birth
rate and immigration, and decline based on death rate and emigration. Population growth
depends on many factors, such as environmental conditions,availability of resources ,
reproduction rate, survivorship and capacities of individuals and number of generations per unit
time.
Communities of plants, animals and humans expand in different ways and circumstances.
Exponential growth is a rare occurrence in nature, and it refers to when populations growing
rate stays the same despite the population size, resulting in a fast increase of population. It
happens when resource availability exceeds capacities for populations to expand. In other
words, resources are enough to feed and facilitate survival for all members of the community.
However, exponential growth does not and cannot prevail in nature. Eventually, populations
surpass the environment’s carrying capacity, and begin to decline. Population growth then
begins to decline as resources begin to decrease in quantity.
As population grows more slowly, approaching a maximum population size imposed by limited
resources in nature, reaching carrying capacity. This is logistic growth.
Population size and growth fluctuates according to the different factors that affect them, such as
diseases, weather and climate conditions, among others.
The abundance and
R* competition is when two or more species compete for the same limited resources, whether it
be nutrients, food or space, or in general, anything for which demand is greater than supply.
This kind of competition can have a great impact on a species evolution or the structure of a
community and it’s distribution.
When faced with a lack of resources, organisms from different populations and species will tend
to compete for these resources. Coexisting will be affected by this competition in such a way
that only some members will obtain enough resources to reproduce successfully and ensure
survival for themselves and their offspring. All species competing will be negatively affected by
interspecific competition. And when two species have the same way of life, niches and need the
same resources to survive, one of them will be left forced to evolve and start using a different
resource.
This is what Darwin’s survival of the fittest and natural selection thesis are based on.
In order to coexist, species have to evolve and adapt and the dominant species will be the one
with the highest chance of survival.
Distribution is the term used to describe the spacial relationship between individuals of a
community within their habitat or range.
Members of a population within a habitat can be distributed in different patterns, which are often
characteristic of the species. These patterns can be clustered in groups (clumped dispersion),
dispersed randomly with no clear pattern (random dispersion) or be more or less equally spaced
apart (uniform dispersion).
Within their range of dispersion, individuals will disperse according to the dispersion of materials
and resources needed for survival and reproduction.
Because resources in nature are not uniform, species tend to have to share and compete for
resources such as land, food, nutrients, space.

Question 3
Resources are limited and sometimes scarce, which leads to competition between members of
different species, so called interspecific competition, as well as members of the same
community, namely intraspecific competition. This last one can be intense in the extent that it
can affect fitness within the population’s density.
Competition is a natural aspect of the world and all environments, and among intraspecific
competition, we have two categories, scramble and contest competition.
In scramble competition, competitors share resources in a more or less equally way. As long as
there is a fair amount or supply of the shared resource, all individuals fare well, but if there is a
limited supply, all competitors may perish. One example of this category is how dungflies
compete for the limited resources of cow feces.
On the other hand, contest competition is when one individual competes and wins over one
resource, often harming its competitors, in order to get full control of some resource, and by
exploiting said resource, it ensures survival. An example of contest competition can be seen in
hyenas fighting over an antelope cadaver of any sort of prey.
Competition, as mentioned earlier, can affect the way a population progresses and its fitness
may be negatively impacted.
When members of the same community start behaving in a territorial manner, which mostly
occurs when males start acting aggressive and protective of their territories against other males
in reproductive coloration during the breeding season, population structure will be affected in the
sense that males and females will be separated inside their space, and males will behave
aggressively against each other, often leading to death. Population growth will be damaged as
individuals face reproductive isolation, which leads to a decrease in birth rate.
Reproduction among individuals will mean to the community as a whole an increase in birth and
population growth.
Sexual selection has two broad, complementary functions, select mates that are generally
similar, called assortative mating, and select mates which are dissimilar, namely dissortative
mating.
Assortative mating ensures reproduction within members of the same species, while dissortative
mating avoids inbreeding.
When sexually selecting a mate to ensure that the best genes are transmitted to the next
generation, different physical aspects are taking in matter, such as plumage, colouring, size,
strength.
Some examples include the drab House Finch female, who will choose her male partner
according to his bright, red plumage on his chest and breasts, peacocks and their elaborate
tails, Mormon male crickets gift females sperm packets.

Question 4
The distribution patterns of marine organisms lay on a broad spectrum of species that have
been influenced in both ecological and geological time by physical and biological processes.
Different features of oceans have had a major impact in the distribution of marine life. These
include tectonic plates, the direction and intensity of ocean currents, climate and water
temperature and physical barriers.

The distribution and dispersion of marine life has been restricted not only by these features, but
also by human activity and the organism’s life cycle. In many cases, organisms have a bipartite
life cycle, which means that their life is divided in two parts. During their larvae phase,
organisms tend to disperse around and can be separated from other individuals easily.
These not only affected the dispersion of species but also their reproductive behaviour.
Populations expand and retreat or become divided via different factors of their environment and
patterns of survival, such as migration in response to light levels, need for food or as a way of
protection. Other factors that impact populations are death and birth rate, life expectancy,
resource availability, water temperature, salinity and oxygenation.
In the case of water temperature, although species have physiologically adapted to a wide
range of temperatures, they are not able to withstand great changes in water temperature,
difficulting migration and dispersion.
Water oxygenation is a critical condition for an ensured survival, and it depends on the water
temperature. Where the water’s temperature increases, oxygenation decreases.

Reproductive isolation within marine species will be mostly thanks to barriers imposed by the
environment, together with internal barriers to gene flow.
In the case of the Chromis (Chromis spp.) eggs are guarded by the male and laid on the
sand.due to water temperature and current flow, survival of offsprings is jeopardized.
The California Sheephead (Semicossyphus pulcher) begin their life as females and after 8 years
they metamorphose to males and remain that way for the rest of their lives. They are a
protogynous species. Their expansion and retreat will be highly affected by water currents and
temperature.
The Trumpetfish (Alustomus sp.) lives isolated by continental and cold water barriers, and is a
hunter fish. It often changes color to camouflage and protect itself from possible harm.
Diadromus life cycle is that of species that live in both saltwater and sweetwater (oceans and
rivers). There are different types of diadromous cycles. So called catadromous fishes, they are
those who spend most of their lives in freshwater and then migrate to the sea to spawn. This is
the case of the Atlantic American Eel, who live in freshwater streams and lakes along the east
coast of North America, only to later in their life cycle return to the Sargasso Sea.
Anadromous life cycles, on the other hand, as seen in the Pacific Salmon, return to the streams
where they hatched from the sea. This species has been thoroughly studied because of its
ability to return after several years at sea to their “birthplace”. After hatching and growing to a
juvenile size, they swim downstream until they reach the ocean where they feed and reach
sexual maturity and then swim upstream again and return home.

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