This unit was about evolution and the different studies and information surrounding it. The essential understandings are that evolution is a slow process. The way evolution occurs is mostly from separation. It talks about how, in the beginning of time, there was a common ancestor, which used RNA and ribozymes to conduct simple chemical functions capable of creating energy and replicating itself. Overtime, evolution occurred, slowly at first, but faster and faster as time went on. There is speciation, which is the splitting of species over long periods of reproductive isolation. This can be through physical, temporal, or behavior isolationism. This is when two populations stop any gene flow from them, either because they are too far away or behavioral differences do not allow sharing of genes. This causes the species to split from the common ancestor, because eventually, differences in genes and environment build up, such that the two populations, if they were to breed again, cannot because of these said differences. There are also a lot of evidence of evolution in the homologous structures of different organisms. There are similar traits, such as bones, in different species, because at some point, there was a common ancestor between them which caused two or more populations of the species to split into different species. I wish to learn more about how this information can be applicable to ourselves in the future. Ultimately, the goal of science is to help our lives be better through a better understanding of the world and universe around us, and I was wondering how all this explanation of evolution could impact us. True, it does explain much of our previously mysterious origins, but it is not really useful to us if there is no use of this knowledge in the future. I want to learn aspects of what we learned about evolution that are useful in the future, so I might apply some of that knowledge in the future, given the opportunity.

One of the labs we did in this unit was the Bird Beak Lab, called the hunger games lab. It features a simulations, of which the students resemble birds fighting for survival. Here is a link to the lab report I wrote about the information we got from the experiment.

An example of speciation occurring in fruit flies
This was a study conducted in the drosophila speciation experiment

A diagram of an unrooted phylogenetic tree
In the center, you can see the origin of life