Blog Post Module 2


Microevolution is something that was easier for me to understand and follow compared to the other ideas from Darwin. Microevolution is the evolutionary change within a species over a short amount of time. I think microevolution relates to natural selection in the sense that natural selections drives the changes within the species that shows the differences over the shorter period of time. Microevolution can take place over one generation, where macroevolution takes place over a much longer period of time. 


I researched about the various sparrow sizes throughout the United States to see what differences there were and how that related to microevolution. By taking a quick glance at the picture I attached above, it is apparent that sparrows have evolved different characteristics depending on their environment and location. We see that on the west coast, sparrows are a lot smaller in size compared to the ones up north and east. Sparrow populations that are bigger up north are due to natural selection. The larger birds can survive the lower temperatures while most of the smaller birds cannot. Since we see sparrows in colder places are generally larger than sparrows in warmer locations, these differences are most likely genetically based. This represents microevolution because the different populations are all the same species, but have different gene frequencies. 




“Understanding Evolution.” Examples of Microevolution, evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/microexamples_01. 

Comments

  1. Emily DavorenSeptember 14, 2021 at 4:20 PM

    Hey Megan! I thought it was very interesting to see how the size of sparrows varies across the country. It really is indicative of evolution. Besides it just being genetic, what is it specifically about being bigger that allows/allowed sparrows to survive colder temperatures? Good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Olivia C PeoplesSeptember 15, 2021 at 8:07 PM

    Hi Megan! Thank you for making microevolution so easy to understand. The figure really helped form the picture in my mind! Other than the weather, do you think there were alternative driving factors that led to this evolution?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bailee TuckerOctober 19, 2021 at 7:34 PM

    Hi Megan! I love how in-depth you were able to describe the sparrow natural selection. Giving an image is also wonderful! I am a visual learner so that helps tremendously.

    ReplyDelete

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