Hows does evolution take place? I understand that its an accumulation of changes to adapt to an environment, but how does it change generation to generation? Is the set of traits that will be passed down to an offspring predetermined or does it change depending on how my environment is? Its seems too fascinating that my environment may change the set of dna that is passed down, or is that not the case?
In: Biology
>Is the set of traits that will be passed down to an offspring predetermined or does it change depending on how my environment is?
These two ideas were actually theories that competed with Darwin’s natural selection! Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested that the actions an organism takes during its life introduce new traits in its offspring – that giraffes come from horses stretching their necks out, or that a bodybuilder would have beefier kids because of his bodybuilding. Others believed that change happened through divine direction, or that there was just a natural progression from “primitive” to “advanced” organisms that was built into nature.
No one knew how genes worked back then, and Darwin himself wasn’t able to answer where new traits come from within a population. These two ideas were more popular than natural selection for decades because of that, although we now understand things like mutations and horizontal gene transfer.
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