More About Darwin

     We continued today with looking at not only Darwin, but those who influenced Darwin's ideas.

Lamark felt that traits that are USED are passed on.  So he thought that giraffe necks had grown longer from stretching them so much.

If Lamarks idea held true that would mean the the son of this baseball pitcher would automatically have a strong arm.

  I want to stress again that we will be applying our understanding of genetics and heredity to what Darwin was seeing.  I mentioned before that during the time Darwin was coming up with his ideas there was no scientific knowledge about heredity or DNA so he referred to all of this as "variations" and "Copying mechanisms"  Please continue to check edline for the notes.  Today's Daily questions were as follow

*What did Darwin notice about the finches and what did that lead him to believe about the “evolution” of them? He noticed that their beak shapes directly corresponded to the type of food they ate.  What he theorized was that the finches has migrated from the main land of South America and overtime adapted to different food sources.  He called this "Descent with modification"

*With our understanding of genetics, these different “variations” are known as what? Alleles

*What do you think caused these different variations? Mutations

*What two types of variations do you believe would provide an “advantage” to a species?  Any allele that would allow them to survive (eat and not be eaten) and reproduce.