Twinning is Winning

       One animal I have always found interesting is the Aye Aye, found in the forests of Madagascar. The Aye Aye is the only member of the family Daubentoniidae, and I only recently found out about this species' amazing adaptations for eating. Aye Ayes have an insanely long third finger, which basically looks like a skinny little stick. The Aye Aye will climb on tree trunks and begin to tap its fingernail from the long digit on the tree trunk, figuring out where the hollow spaces in the trunk are. It presses its large ears up close to the tree trunk, and can hear when there is a bug inside. When it has located a grub, the Aye Aye will then use its modified incisors to carve out a hole in the trunk leading into the hollow tunnel. Then it uses that long digit to poke down into the tunnel until it hooks the grub and can bring it up and out to eat.  I literally have not been able to stop thinking about this since I found out how they eat. Here's a video of the proc...

    Selection doesn't mean that genetic variation is eliminated; it simply means one allele or one pairing of alleles is favored. Those that aren't favored (variation of group genetics) are still passed on in the background, and thus are still heritable.       Mutation is always a great way to gain genetic variation in a population. Mutations can randomly arise, and because they are random in what genetic material they affect, can increase genetic variation. Of course, how long it sticks around in a population's gene pool depends whether the mutation is advantageous or not.       Another great way for a population to increase genetic diversity is immigration. When new individuals come into a population that originated from a separate population, they bring a portion of their previous gene pool with them. That previous gene pool might have some different variations of genes than the new gene pool, and thus the organism's immigration incre...

  What have you learned so far? Not in the sense of what did we cover in class, but where have you personally have had some real breakthroughs or changes in your understanding? I have learned the importance of our class discussions, and how much you can learn from talking with different people who help you think in new ways. If you go back to your original blog post where you defined evolution, how would you change it? How has your understanding of evolution changed since then? I would add to my post, is that not all adaptations or steps of evolution are necessarily beneficial to the organism. There can also be negative effects, and mutations that can wipe out populations. My understanding of evolution has broadened, there's not just a set explanation of what it is; it's a whole melting pot of natural phenomenon. What concepts are you still struggling with? Where do you think you need additional help and clarification? I think I have a hard time when trying to understand the ge...

  When animals are inbred, it can cause many a health issue (not to mention the loss of genetic diversity). However, there sometimes can be some benefits to inbreeding. One of them being, you can have better chances of getting a desired trait. For instance: if two cat siblings have a brown coat color (homozygous recessive gene), and you want a kitten with a brown coat, the best chance to get that trait is with two homozygous recessive parents. That leads into my next benefit- speed. Inbreeding concentrates the gene so its occurrence increases quicker than if you used non-related parents. However, I believe there are more downsides to inbreeding than benefits. Whenever I think of inbreeding, I think of what humans have done to many dog breeds within the last 100-150 years. Many of the perfect pooches we know today are nothing like they were in the early 1900s. Dogs have always been somewhat inbred in order to get their desired breed characteristics, but this accelerated in the early...