Assignment 3


To download this as a MS Word file that you can edit click here.


You can also just cut and paste these tables into your document as you need them.



#1

Paste organism here

Number of generations:

Principle of Selection:


#2

Paste organism here

Number of generations:

Principle of Selection:

Special genes turned on: 1. 2.
3.



#3

Paste organism here

Number of generations:

Principle of Selection:

Special genes turned on: 1. 2.
3.

Paste Fossil History here. Circle, Mark or otherwise identify on your fossil history each place you think there is a new species, beginning with the bacterium and ending with the final organism.



4. Questions on Fossil History from #3

  • a. How many times in that history would you say there were new species?

  • b. How did you choose these points? What does it mean to say that these are separate species, according to the theory of evolution? How does this differ from the definition of a species for contemporaneous populations?




  • c. Could you tell that it was each stage you identified was a news species at the moment you evolved it? Is being a member of a certain species a property that a population has in virtue its existence or properties at any one moment? Explain. (You may want to peek at Dennett Chapter 4 to help answer these questions.)




#5

Paste organism here

a. Is it as interesting as the ones you evolved?



b. Why doesn't drift produce significant evolution?






#6

Paste organism here

a. What is saltation? (Look it up or look in the index of Dennett)




b. If an organism is relatively well suited to its environment, what will saltation do to that adaptation?





c. What does this show about how large mutations could have been involved in evolution?



#7

Paste Triangle here:

What is this space? What are you looking at when you move your mouse and make different organisms appear?

Is the sequence of organisms the same as your fossil history? Why not? How is the path taken by evolution different than the path you take from the bacterium to your organism on the triangle?

Explore the space around the path between the bacterium and your organism. Are there other interesting organisms nearby? Are they biologically possible according to Dennett? What does that mean?



#8

Paste engineered organism below. Attempt at organism # _________

gene # _________ What it does:

gene # _________ What it does:


gene # _________ What it does: