Some of you will have seen Starship Troopers, a moviebased upon a novel by Robert Heinlein. The film deviates from thebook in some ways, for example the book describes a visit to aplanet to resupply the dropships used in combat operations by theM.I. (mobile infantry). Heinlein describes this visit in the book;a portion of the novel is reproduced on the followingpage.
The followig passage contains two concepts we havediscussed in class in relation to the effects of mutation onpopulations, one positive and one negative. Describe the twomutation related concepts Heinlein discusses. You must describethese concepts as a biologist - you must use the technical terms wehave used in class properly and explain the positive and negativeeffect of mutation on the evolution and health of apopulation.
(a) What is the positive effect of mutation as describedby Heinlein?
(I.E., what does Heinlein describe as a benefit ofhaving more mutations)
(b) What is the negative effect of mutation as describedby Heinlein?
(I.E., what does Heinlein describe as a problem ofhaving more mutations)
I never have learned the co-ordinates of Sanctuary,nor the name or catalogue number of the star it orbits - becausewhat you donât know, you canât spill; the location isultra-top-secret, known only to shipâs captains, piloting officers,and such ... and I understand, with each of them under orders andhypnotic compulsion to suicide if necessary to avoid capture. So Idonât want to know. With the possibility that Luna Base might betaken and Terra herself occupied, the Federation kept as much ofits beef as possible as Sanctuary, so that a disaster back homewould not necessarily mean capitulation.
But I can tell you what sort of a planet itis. Like Earth, but retarded.
Literally retarded, like a kid who takes tenyears to learn to wave bye-bye and never does manage to masterpatty cake. It is a planet as near Earth as two planets can be,same age according to the planetologists and its star is the sameage as the Sun and the same type, so say the astrophysicists. Ithas plenty of flora and fauna, the same atmosphere as Earth, nearenough, and much the same weather; it even has a good-sized moonand Earthâs exceptional tides.
With all these advantages it barely got awayfrom the starting gate. You see, itâs short on mutations; it doesnot enjoy Earths high level of natural radiation.
Its typical and most highly developed plantlife is a very primitive giant fern; its top animal life is aproto-insect which hasnât even developed colonies. I am notspeaking of transplanted Terran flora and fauna - our stuff movesin and brushes the native stuff aside.
With its evolutionary progress held down toalmost to zero by lack of radiation and a consequent mostunhealthily low mutation rate, native life forms of Sanctuary justhavenât had a decent chance to evolve and arenât fit to compete.Their gene patterns remain fixed for a relatively long time; theyarenât adaptable - like being forced to play the same bridge handover and over again, for eons, with no hope of getting a betterone.
As long as they just competed with eachother, this didnât matter too much - morons among morons, so tospeak. But when types that had evolved on a planet enjoying highradiation and fierce competition were introduced, the native stuffwas outclassed.
Now all the above is perfectly obvious fromhigh school biology ... but the high forehead from the researchstation there who was telling me about this brought up a point Iwould have never thought of.
What about the human beings who havecolonized Sanctuary?
Not transients like me, but the colonists wholive there, many of whom were born there, and whose descendantswill live there, even unto the umpteenth generation - what aboutthose descendants? It doesnât do a person any harm not to beradiated; in fact itâs a bit safer - leukemia and some types ofcancer are almost unknown there. Besides that, the economicsituation is at present all in their favor; when they plant a fieldof (Terran) wheat;, they donât even have to clear out the weeds.Terran wheat displaces anything native.
But the descendants of those colonists wonâtevolve. Not much, anyhow. This chap told me that they could improvea little through mutation from other causes, from new blood addedby immigration, and from natural selection among the gene patternsthey already own - but that is all very minor compared with theevolutionary rate on Terra and on any usual planet. So whathappens? Do they stay frozen at their present levels while the restof the human race moves on past them, until they are livingfossils, as out of place as a pithecanthropus in a spaceship?
Or will they worry about the fate of theirdescendants and dose themselves regularly with X-rays or maybe setof lots of dirty-type nuclear explosions each year to build up afallout reservoir in their atmosphere? (Accepting, of course, theimmediate dangers of radiation to themselves in order to provide aproper genetic heritage of mutation for the benefit of theirdescendants.)
This bloke predicted that they would not doanything. He claims that the human is too individualistic, tooself-centered, to worry that much about future generations. He saysthat the genetic impoverishment of distant generations through thelack of radiation is something most people are simply incapable ofworrying about. And of course it is a far-distant threat; evolutionworks so slowly, even on Terra, that the development of a newspecies is a matter of many, many thousands of years.
I donât know. Shucks, I donât know what Imyself will do more than half the time; how can I predict what acolony of strangers will do? But Iâm sure of this: Sanctuary isgoing to be fully settled, either by us or by the bugs. Or bysomebody. It is a potential utopia, and, with desirable real estateso scarce in this end of the Galaxy, it will not be left in thepossession of primitive life forms that failed to make thegrade.
