ANTB14H3 : Antb14 chapter outlines
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Components of an organism that help it survive and reproduce. The human eye is an example of a complex adaptation. Before darwin, adaptation was explained as the work of a heavenly designer: darwin"s theory of adaptation. After medical school, darwin spent time on the h. m. s. Beagle charting the coast of south america and studying the flora and fauna there. Darwin returned to london and developed three postulates of adaptation: Population increases infinitely, but the environment is finite. Peter and rosemary grant of princeton university studied the finches for years. Drought struck daphne major in the late 1970s, and plant life dwindled. Large, hard seeds and beak-size variation contributed to adaptation. Finches with deeper beaks survived in larger numbers than those with smaller beaks (fig. Beak depth was passed on to new generations (fig. 1. 10), causing a 4% increase in average beak depth in the finch population. The grants"s long-term research shows stabilizing selection and equilibrium in beak size (fig.