Homology Analogy and Dark Knight Rises

Anne Hathaway going to Dark Knight Rises Set

Both of these images show the homologous structure of the arm and front paw. The species are obviously a dog and a human.  There is a difference in the structure being the place of the thumb and the spread of the digits themselves. The differences in function lies in that dogs use their front paws for locomotion while humans use their arms with opposable thumbs to grasp things firmly and move things around. The common ancestor between these two was likely the splitting point of the configuration of the digits themselves. The different assortment of the digits eventually led for an upright mammal and finally a change in the function of the arm all together.

Puppy waving hello

These two are a honey bee and a falcon and possess an analogous structure of the wings. The structure of the wings looks somewhat similar in shape, but the actual makeup is quite different. This being the feathers and light bones in the falcon and a lack of both on the bee. The function is primarily the same being the achievement of flight. These two traits are clearly analogous because of a similar environmental stress for flight. The different environments require a falcon to fly in order to eat and a bee to fly in order to pollinate. These two species do not have the genes in common for the structure of the wing.  This mechanism of requiring an adaption to allow for the better possibility of completing the necessary  tasks to survive added a pressure for flight to be achieved. The common ancestor of birds and insects did not posses wings because the ancestor did not have the environmental pressure of requiring flight to better survive.

Honey Bee

 

Falcon

Riddle me this

So lets see if anyone can guess this... it should not be too hard using the chart

GACTTCATTACACCCTTTAAGGGTGAACATTGTCTATCGCGCTATC

           I believe that Charles Lyell had the most influence over Darwin's development of his theory of natural selection. Lyell was not only a mentor of Darwin's, but also a friend. The academic influence lies within Lyell's Principles of Geology which Darwin took with him on his 5 year trip aboard the Beagle. This book talks about the concept of the world being so much older than previously thought which led to a different concept of possibilities about the change of animals in nature. One of the core concepts that Lyell helped with Darwin's thought process was the change in the time line. Darwin's theory of natural selection would prove to take many populations to die and eventually see a manifestation of change in a population through natural selection. The enveloping of a new possible time line for animals to change gave Darwin a possibility of animals changing over millions of years instead of thousands of years which far better fit his concept of a population change over time due to the natural selection process.      

            Charles Darwin could have conceptually established his theory of natural selection without the presence of Lyell, but because the concept of a longer time line was not yet introduced, Darwin seems unlikely to have presented his ideas to the scientific community. I think that because Darwin's extremely shy demeanor in which he was very afraid of tarnishing the image of his and his father's name that Darwin would not have presented the ideas that he had found. Those ideas would have been found either when that concept had been introduced or when he had died and someone had read through his scientific journals.

            The attitude of the Church mostly indirectly affected Darwin. This affect being that the scientific community had held similar thoughts as the Church during his time. This made Darwin unsure of publishing his concepts due to the possibility of tarnishing his name. Once published On the Origin of Species received a completely negative opinion of the public, but the scientific community eventually came to Darwin's support. 

Sources:

Introduction to Physical Anthropology

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_12

http://www.merke.ch/biografien/biologen_en/darwin.php

Just started this blog. Yay? Well at least the design editing is extremely simple. Next post should be something actually scientific....