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Natural Selection

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Natural selection is one of several key concepts within the theory of evolution. To explain exactly what natural selection is and why it's so important we need two other evolutionary concepts: Descent with Modification and the daring idea of Common Descent.  Descent with Modification is the fact that when parents have children, those children often look and behave slightly different than their parents, and slightly different than each other. They descend from their parents with modifications.  The differences found in offspring are due to random genetic mutations. Common Descent is the idea that all life on Earth is related, that we all descended from a common ancestor. Through the gradual process of descent with modification over many generations, a single species is thought to have given rise to all the life we see today. The common descent of all life on earth is not a di...

Darwin's Frog

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  I'm quite sure that most of you reading have at least heard of Darwin's -my- finches, with their different beaks and skulls that prove my theory of adaptation and evolution. They were one of my most important researches, if not the most alone. But have you heard of the Darwin's frog? Even if they are not of upmost value in my work, they are one of the more unique animals that you don't hear about often. I discovered then in 1834 in Chile, while on my famous voyage around the world on the ship HMS Beagle. It is shaped like a leaf, and looks to have a long, triangle shaped extension to it's snout, and green like the surroundings around it. As you can guess, it uses this adaptation to it's advantage, camouflaging itself to hide away from it's predators and to hunt.    You might think, what quality could this frog have that makes it so interesting? The answer is in how it behaves with it's offspring- something seems to be not quite right. A...

The Dangerous Decline in Biological Diversity

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  Our world is experiencing an immense crisis as thousands of species are in danger of disappearing forever, and it’s not a secret. With humans’ actions affecting the planet in the past decade and even before that, even when I was a young man, extinction rates are climbing even higher each year, with more and more animals and creatures threatened.  Today, we are undergoing the sixth big wave of extinction in the past half billion years, the currently one being the worst extinction phenomenon since the wiping out of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Although the process of extinction is a natural phenomenon, with the help of outer forces the rate has increased as much as about 1,000 times than what should be 5 species a year disappearing. Scientists and researchers of the world assert that 30 to 50 percent of all species we know today will be gone by mid-century.  The abnormal speed of natural life and ecosystems rising are, as expected, caused by humans. Main ...