BIOA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Speciation, Schizocarp, Chamaesyce

• School: UTSC
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BIOA01H3
• Professor: Mark Fitzpatrick

Document Summary

Environments constantly change over time: adaptation lags environmental change. Each generation adapted to environment of parents. Natural selection never anticipates environmental change: predictions based on evolution: If life originated on earth in the distant past and then evolved, we should see evidence in the fossil record. If evolution occurred within lineages, and those lineages sometimes split then we should see change in species or morphology through the fossil record. If creatures share a common ancestry, then we should see transitional forms. We should see evidence of retrodictions and vestigial characters. Small fortis ate small seeds: forced to feed on dreaded tribulus. Only fortis and magnirostris can break open hard spines. Extremely sharp spines: differing strategies for eating tribulus, magnirostris: Can often eat all the seeds in one mericarp: fortis: Braces it against a rock to split it open. Cost = fewer seeds obtained per mericarp. Magnirostris gets 2. 5x more energy per minute than fortis.