What is Free Evolution?

Free evolution is the concept that the natural processes of organisms can lead to their development over time. This includes the appearance and growth of new species.

Numerous examples have been offered of this, such as different varieties of fish called sticklebacks that can be found in salt or fresh water, and walking stick insect varieties that prefer particular host plants. These reversible traits are not able to explain fundamental changes to the basic body plan.

Evolution through Natural Selection

Scientists have been fascinated by the evolution of all living organisms that inhabit our planet for centuries. Charles Darwin's natural selection is the best-established explanation. This process occurs when people who are more well-adapted are able to reproduce faster and longer than those who are less well-adapted. Over time, a community of well-adapted individuals expands and eventually becomes a new species.

Natural selection is a cyclical process that involves the interaction of three factors including inheritance, variation, and reproduction. Variation is caused by mutation and sexual reproduction, both of which increase the genetic diversity within the species. Inheritance is the transfer of a person's genetic traits to the offspring of that person, which includes both dominant and recessive alleles. news is the production of viable, fertile offspring, which includes both asexual and sexual methods.

All of these elements have to be in equilibrium to allow natural selection to take place. If, for instance an allele of a dominant gene makes an organism reproduce and last longer than the recessive gene then the dominant allele is more common in a population. If the allele confers a negative advantage to survival or reduces the fertility of the population, it will disappear. The process is self-reinforced, meaning that a species with a beneficial characteristic will survive and reproduce more than an individual with an inadaptive characteristic. The more offspring an organism can produce the more fit it is that is determined by its ability to reproduce and survive. People with desirable characteristics, such as a long neck in giraffes, or bright white patterns on male peacocks are more likely to others to live and reproduce which eventually leads to them becoming the majority.

Natural selection is an element in the population and not on individuals. This is a significant distinction from the Lamarckian theory of evolution, which argues that animals acquire characteristics by use or inactivity. For example, if a animal's neck is lengthened by stretching to reach for prey, its offspring will inherit a larger neck. The difference in neck length between generations will continue until the neck of the giraffe becomes too long to no longer breed with other giraffes.

Evolution through Genetic Drift

In the process of genetic drift, alleles within a gene can reach different frequencies in a group due to random events. At some point, one will reach fixation (become so widespread that it is unable to be removed by natural selection), while other alleles will fall to lower frequency. This could lead to a dominant allele in extreme. 에볼루션 룰렛 are essentially eliminated, and heterozygosity is reduced to zero. In a small number of people this could lead to the complete elimination of recessive gene. Such a scenario would be known as a bottleneck effect and it is typical of the kind of evolutionary process that takes place when a large amount of people migrate to form a new population.

A phenotypic bottleneck can also occur when survivors of a disaster such as an epidemic or a mass hunting event, are condensed in a limited area. The survivors will have an dominant allele, and will share the same phenotype. This situation might be the result of a conflict, earthquake or even a cholera outbreak. The genetically distinct population, if it remains vulnerable to genetic drift.

Walsh Lewens and Ariew utilize Lewens, Walsh and Ariew employ a "purely outcome-oriented" definition of drift as any departure from the expected values of differences in fitness. They give the famous example of twins who are both genetically identical and have exactly the same phenotype. However, one is struck by lightning and dies, while the other continues to reproduce.

This kind of drift could play a very important role in the evolution of an organism. However, it is not the only method to develop. Natural selection is the main alternative, where mutations and migrations maintain phenotypic diversity within the population.

Stephens asserts that there is a significant difference between treating the phenomenon of drift as a force, or an underlying cause, and considering other causes of evolution, such as mutation, selection and migration as forces or causes. He argues that a causal-process account of drift allows us distinguish it from other forces and this distinction is essential. He also argues that drift has both a direction, i.e., it tends towards eliminating heterozygosity. It also has a size that is determined by the size of the population.

Evolution through Lamarckism

Students of biology in high school are frequently introduced to Jean-Baptiste Lemarck's (1744-1829) work. His theory of evolution is often called "Lamarckism" and it states that simple organisms grow into more complex organisms through the inherited characteristics which result from the organism's natural actions use and misuse. Lamarckism is typically illustrated with the image of a giraffe that extends its neck longer to reach the higher branches in the trees. This process would result in giraffes passing on their longer necks to offspring, which then grow even taller.

Lamarck was a French Zoologist. In his inaugural lecture for his course on invertebrate Zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris on the 17th of May in 1802, he introduced an original idea that fundamentally challenged the previous understanding of organic transformation. According to Lamarck, living creatures evolved from inanimate matter through a series of gradual steps. Lamarck was not the first to suggest that this might be the case, but he is widely seen as being the one who gave the subject its first general and comprehensive treatment.

The prevailing story is that Lamarckism was an opponent to Charles Darwin's theory of evolutionary natural selection and both theories battled each other in the 19th century. Darwinism eventually triumphed and led to the development of what biologists now call the Modern Synthesis. This theory denies acquired characteristics can be passed down through generations and instead argues organisms evolve by the selective action of environment factors, such as Natural Selection.


Although Lamarck endorsed the idea of inheritance by acquired characters and his contemporaries spoke of this idea, it was never a major feature in any of their evolutionary theorizing. This is due to the fact that it was never tested scientifically.

However, it has been more than 200 years since Lamarck was born and in the age of genomics, there is a large amount of evidence to support the heritability of acquired characteristics. This is often called "neo-Lamarckism" or more often epigenetic inheritance. It is a form of evolution that is as valid as the more popular Neo-Darwinian theory.

Evolution by the process of adaptation

One of the most popular misconceptions about evolution is being driven by a struggle for survival. This notion is not true and ignores other forces driving evolution. The struggle for survival is more effectively described as a struggle to survive within a particular environment, which may be a struggle that involves not only other organisms but as well the physical environment.

To understand how evolution operates it is beneficial to think about what adaptation is. Adaptation refers to any particular characteristic that allows an organism to survive and reproduce within its environment. It could be a physical structure, like fur or feathers. It could also be a trait of behavior such as moving to the shade during hot weather, or coming out to avoid the cold at night.

The ability of a living thing to extract energy from its surroundings and interact with other organisms as well as their physical environments is essential to its survival. The organism must possess the right genes to produce offspring, and be able to find sufficient food and resources. The organism must also be able reproduce itself at an amount that is appropriate for its niche.

These factors, together with mutation and gene flow, lead to an alteration in the percentage of alleles (different varieties of a particular gene) in a population's gene pool. As time passes, this shift in allele frequencies could result in the development of new traits, and eventually new species.

Many of the characteristics we admire in plants and animals are adaptations. For instance lung or gills that extract oxygen from the air, fur and feathers as insulation long legs to run away from predators and camouflage to conceal. However, a proper understanding of adaptation requires a keen eye to the distinction between behavioral and physiological traits.

Physical traits such as thick fur and gills are physical traits. Behavioral adaptations are not an exception, for instance, the tendency of animals to seek companionship or to retreat into the shade during hot temperatures. In addition, it is important to note that lack of planning does not make something an adaptation. In fact, failure to think about the implications of a behavior can make it ineffective despite the fact that it might appear reasonable or even essential.