Question

Address the following misconception in 100-150 words. One misconception about the theory of evolution is that natural selection gives organisms what they need to adapt and senses what traits will be advantageous for future generations. Explain how populations can adapt to changing environments without nature sensing what changes need to take place to make them better suited for the future.

Answer 1

Evolution is the gradual change of characteristics of a population or organism along several generations. As the nature change , accordingly the species characters also change. The question is how does it change. The best theory is natural selection or survival for the fittest and mutation theory.

Among a species there is no exact copy of the same species, due to mutation or differential gene expression. The best example is the peppered moth evolution. Before industrialization in britain, there is both species of black and white moths. The white moth camouflaged with the clean trees, and black moth are easily detected and eaten up by their predators. But after industrialization, the tree got more darker due to pollution and the black moths camouflaged with the darker tree and white moth get eaten up by their predators more . So, it is clear that nature do select the fittest species according to the environment situation. But this does not mean that species does not sense what will be adantageous for future geeration. In other words, the black and white moth are already there and nature select the best.

The white moth does not sense the polluted trees and changes to black moth, this is not how it is done.

I think it is long enough but for your better understanding, i will add more points about mutation. You can rewrite it in your own words. So, in bacteria culture, for example, we might think that all the bacteria proliferated have the exact same genetic material among the bacteria, but this is not so. Among 10000s of bacteria, there might be 1 or 2 different bacteria with different genome due to mutation. Lets say this bateria is prone to an antibiotic, vancomycin. When treated with vancomycin all the bacteria will be death but the mutated 1 or 2 survived due to mutation. So, this new mutated bacteria will start proliferating but will be resistant to vancomycin (this is how multi drug resistant bacteria are formed).  You must know that the vancomycin resistant bacteria is already there but in very small amount but when vancomycin is treated the bacteria resitant to vancomycin get proliferated, as there is no competition among other bacteria.

* the bacteria doesnot change to vancomycin resitant when treated with vancomycin. But selected the bacteria resistant to vancomycin by nature.

I hope u understand my point, if not feel free to ask me anytime.