Haneen Abouhassoun

  I think that the phrase of “survival of the good enough” is more accurate to say. Because it dispels the myth of needing to be the biggest in size, strongest in strength, or the fastest in speed. Meaning that no matter the way sexual maturity is reach and a viable offspring is reproduced, that would make the organism more fit than any organism more powerful than it but it’s unable to reproduce. Since we now know that natural selection favors those that are able to reproduce in time we can see how you just need to be good enough to be fit.

1. Choose one of the examples of convergence from the "Improbable Destinies" Chapter The eyeball of an octopus and the eyeball of humans. 2. Explain what convergent evolution means (perhaps contrasting it with divergent evolution will help). Convergent evolution is when two different species that had evolved separately from two distantly related ancestors share some features, such as fish and whales, even tho the two species have the same structures they are two completely different species.  in contrast divergent evolution is when two species come from the same ancestor. 3. Explain AND illustrate how your choice in #1 is an example of convergent evolution. As it was demonstrated in the reading, even thought the most the recent common ancestor between humans and octopuses existed about 550 million years ago, we both share almost identically structured eyes.  4. Given this week's exploration of natural selection provide ideas of how these two distantly related organi...

  1. How would you define mutation for Jr. High students? Introduce students with this definition.  Mutations is what made some small unicellular organism millions of years ago develop over time with adding features and taking features survive their changing environment and grow into all the organisms and different life forms we see today. Mutation is evolution. 2. Make up an organism. In a population of this organism describe and demonstrate how mutations occur. describe and demonstrate how mutations can be neutral, beneficial, or harmful. Explain how each of these mutation types could influence the evolutionary trajectory of this population A mutation might occur by the umpa's environment experiencing some sort of change where this organism is now exposed to more sunlight (UV rays), and this exposure causes a mutation in the   gamete cells   of the umpa.  The types of mutations that could occur could be either synonymous or non-synonymous. if the mu...

 "Survival of the fittest" This myth interested me because many assume that survival of the fittest means that the stronger, bigger, and faster the better, and many media sources, such as movies, and books helped spread this myth for many generations. However, this is not true as we learned in the video from our first week, survival of the fittest isn't entirely about survival and is mostly about successful reproduction and surviving long enough to reproduce. Therefore, evolution favors convenience and efficiency over enhancement.   I am sorry for this nightmare-ish creature drawing