PSY 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Psy, Psych
4 May 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Evolution is stimulated by changes in the environment. If the climate is totally stable, the species would adapt as thoroughly as possible and change little to nothing afterwards. Climate change, food change sources, predators change, and so on. When the conditions of life change, what was previously a useful feature can become harmful, and vice versa. Darwin believed that evolution was a slow, steady process. But today we know that it can occur rapidly, gradually, or almost not at all, depending on the pace and nature of environmental change and the degree to which genetic variation already occurs in the population. Environmental change promotes evolution, not by inducing the necessary mutations, but by promoting natural selection. Many mutations that would not have been beneficial before, and would have been weeded out by natural selection, are advantageous in the new environment, so that they are passed on in increasing numbers from generation to generation.
