Genetic Drift

ge•ne•tic dri•ft (noun)
a process of evolution by which the frequency of alleles in a population fluctuates due to random occurrences.
Discipline of Origin: Evolutionary Biology.

In evolutionary biology, there exist many terms that describe events and processes that affect the evolution of a population, which inculde: bottleneck effect, partitioning of resources, competition, predation, natural selection (directional, stabilizing, distruptive, etc), etc.

As defined above, Genetic Drift is a process that affects the allele frequency of a gene randomly. The example that Mr. Cloutier, my Biology 11 teacher, used in class is my favourite. It goes something like this:

Imagine there is a population of goats. 50% of goats have bigger ears and 50% of goats have smaller ears. Let's say that one day, all of the goats with big ears are eating grass near the top of Mt St Helens, and all the goats with small ears are eating grass at the bottom of the mountain. It so happens that Mt St Helens decides to erupt, and so all of the goats at the top of the mountain die when it explodes, but most of the goats at the bottom of the mountain survive. This means that the surviving population of goats all have small ears, so instead of a 50/50 ratio of small ear genes to large ear genes, the ratio of genes for small ears to genes for large ears has skyrocketed. This is not due to any advantages of having large or small ears, its just randomly how the gene frequency was affected.

Of course, this is an extreme example, and there are other, more defined, realistic, and practical examples, but this is my favourite because we have the instance of goats exploding.

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I wanted to talk about evolution today because there are many misconceptions about evolution. First of all, evolution is a process that occurs over MANY GENERATIONS. Secondly, it is a process that operates of POPULATIONS, NOT INDIVIDUALS. This sort of misconception has led to the term "evolution" and "evolved" to be used incorrectly. The greatest case is that of POKEMON, where one individual pokemon of a certain species is able to evolve into another species of pokemon. (See what I did there? I used science to transition into one of my lifelong childhood obsessions: POKEMON. Sneaky, n'est pas?)

OMG SO IF YOU DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW, POKEMON BLACK AND WHITE, THE FIFTH GENERATION OF POKEMON, WAS RECENTLY RELEASED IN JAPAN AND IS SET TO RELEASE IN NOTH AMERICA THIS SPRING!

I will now provide you with some commentary regarding the new pokemon game with reference to the old ones as well.

 These are the new starters for Pokemon Black and White. The top row is the grass starter evolutionary line, the middle is the fire, and the bottom is the water. I quite like the grass starter in this game; certainly I like the final evolution way more than the final grass starter's evolution in 3rd and 4th gen. games; the snake is rather elegant, and I like the design. The fire pig, to me, is rather hideous, and not only that, the final evolution is the third fire started to have a dual fire/fighting type in a row! (i.e. the fire starters in gen 3, 4, and now 5 all evolve into a final form that has the type fire/fighting) The water type has a cool final form, I think, and overall, I give it a passing status.

When I first saw the pokemon of 4th gen, I had one of two thoughts: THIS POKEMON IS CUTE/SO COOL! or, THIS POKEMON IS HIDEOUS!


As I was going through 5th gen pokemon, I found myself saying one of three things:
1) THIS POKEMON IS SO CUTE/COOL I WANT IT!
2) THIS POKEMON IS HIDEOUS! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?
3) THIS POKEMON IS SO INCREDIBLY AWKWARD!

For example, pokemon that are incredubly cute/beautiful include these evolution lines:

 Pokemon that are cool include these:

 THIS POKEMON LINE HAS GOT TO BE MY FAVOURITE ADDITION. They are Ghost/Fire type pokemon, AND THEY'RE SO CUTE!

 

Okay, so now these pokemon are really ugly. Some of them don't even look like pokemon!

 

These next pokemon are just really really awkward. I mean, look at them! SO AWKWARD!

All in all, I have very mixed feelings about this generation.

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SO, seeing as you posted late last week, I felt that it would be okay for me to post late as well; I had a lot of hmwk to do at the end of last week, esp since I took a break yesterday to go to the Halloween party.


I apologize for the poor quality of the pokemon photos; using the game sprites were the fastest way to do them. Also, seeing all those Machiavellians was interesting. I must say, I do agree with them in the sense that we should be rooted in what is here in this life right now, instead of depending on an ethereal world beyond this one; I think I told you about this one woman who is hailed as a saint in her respective religion (I think it might have been Buddhism? I can't remember...) who was a very respected spiritual leader, and one day, she ran through the streets with a bucket of water and a torch, screaming that she was going to put out the fires of hell and burn down the gates of heaven so that people would love God for who he is, and not because they feared hell or wanted to go to heaven. In that aspect, I agree with the Machiavellians, but on their conclusion that the world must be capable of evil I do not agree. (that's my little splurge of Machiavellians).

I'm glad your youth has been picking up! That's awesome! Lol loving the Steve reference XD I hope your halloween was as fun as ours was; it was certainly eventful, but in retrospect, you didn't miss that much. Just videogames and disney movies (OMG I LOVE CASTLE CRASHERS SO MUCH =D)

Anyways, midterms are starting to pick up again, and winter weather is settling in. At least, the perpetually gray skies, the never-ending rain, and the miserably short hours of daylight. But, in a way, I love winter; I complain about it now because I don't have time to enjoy it, but winter is certainly my favourite season of the year =)

Anyways, I just realized that I procrastinated a bit more than I could have afforded to, so I'm going to finish off my prep for the Chem Lab I have tomorrow morning (I'm synthesizing the ester isopropyl acetate from isopropyl alcohol and acetic acid, which should be interesting... I really hope I don't mess it up =S. I realize that you probs don't understand a single word of that, but it be k =P)


Chat soon,
~Tim~