Evolution, Natural Selection and Mutations

In order to understand the origin of new diseases like Covid-19, we need to understand evolution, natural selection and mutations. Let's start with evolution.

Evolution

This is a term that means ''change'' in our daily language, but for biologists means:

"change in the gene pool of a population over generations.''

This video does a good job of explaining that idea. You want to focus on the following study guide questions as you watch the video

Natural Selection

Let's delve deeper into natural selection as a mechanism of evolution. Natural selection can be defined:

'as a difference in the survival and reproduction of individuals in a population'

I can think of this as ''Nature'' or the environment selecting which individuals do better than others and therefore survive and reproduce. There are three conditions necessary for natural selection to occur. 

Watch this short video to learn about the three ingredients necessary for natural selection

Sources of Genetic Variation

There are two main sources of genetic variation that we have examined: sexual reproduction and mutations. Sexual reproduction reshuffles genetic traits and is very important when talking about the evolution of eukaryotes. But viruses and bacteria are much more influenced by mutations. Therefore we are going to focus on this as a source of variation.

I've borrowed a video from one of my fellow Bio 16 instructors, Riva Bruenn, since she does such a good job with the topic.

Click anywhere on the video to play it.