Topic 5 - Adaptation

Question 1

Adaptation vs. Acclimation

Answer 1

Adaptation
- A heritable phenotype that allows individuals to perform a function which enhances their survival / reproduction

Acclimation
- Process by which an individual organism adjusts to a change in its environment

Question 2

What are exaptations?

Answer 2

An adaption that had originally evolved for a different context

Question 3

What is a adaptationist fairy tale?

Answer 3

An untested and unsupported explanation for the adaptive value of a phenotype

Question 4

What is the criteria for an adaptive trait?

Answer 4

• Heritable
• Increase organism’s survival and reproductive success
• Evolved through natural selection

Question 5

Are adaptions complex?

Answer 5

• Do not need to be complex
• Natural selection can produce complex structures
• Complex adaptations take a lot longer and have multiple layers of complexity (eg. the eye)

Question 6

How can an adaptation evolve over time?

Answer 6

Adaptions can evolve multiple components overtime making them more complex and useful towards the species

Question 7

Methods to demonstrate adaptation?

Answer 7

Comparative Method
- Compares trait differences between multiple populations with varying agents

Reciprocal Transplant
- Local adaptation is tested by switching environment

Question 8

What is a darwinian demon and why don’t we see them?

Answer 8

• An ideal organism that would maximize all aspects of fitness

Why we don’t see them,
- Historical constraints
- Functional trade offs
- Trade offs in investment
- Changes in environment
- Other evolutionary processes