Evolution by Kate

When I hear "fitness" my brain automatically goes to a muscular person grindin in the weight room, a person on a run, or someone doing a killer HIIT workout with the rest of the moms in town. BUT.... I have a feeling that definition of fitness is not going to fly for my answer to this prompt. How I would define fitness in the parameters of this class would be: traits of an organism that allow them to survive and reproduce in their environment and to have successful offspring who are able to do the same. One common idea that pops into my brain on this topic is fitness based off looks. So if you were to have two male peacocks, and one with super vibrant colors and a large tail fan. Then another male peacock with more dull colors and a small tail fan, the more vibrant one would be more "fit" because it is more likely to mate and have viable offspring than the more dull one who is less likely to be picked by a female to mate with. When it comes to measuring fitness....

My favorite prediction from Darwin's idea of Descent with Modification is that species are not independent but are connected by descent from common ancestors. This can be seen in something like homology where part of an organism has a similarity in its function or form to another species due to a shared ancestor.  An example of this would be the human appendix. The human appendix is a vestigial structure meaning that it is in a decreased sized due to low usage in the human body today. The human appendix is homologous to the caecum in animals like a rat who need a large one to produce cellulase in order to digest the cellulose in the plant cell walls that they eat. However since the human diet has evolved to include a wide variety of foods beyond plant material the size of this has shrunk drastically and the caecum is now not as large of a section in the large intestine and includes the extra piece of appendix. The appendix is still functional in the human immune system but does not...

 In my own words I would describe evolution to be genetic change over time that is influenced by the environment around the organism. The environment aspect of this statement is incredibly important. If an organism were to undergo a genetic mutation that caused a change that inevitably did not work in the environment they lived in they would be more likely to die off, with lower chances of reproducing and propagating that mutation. Conversely, if a organism were to undergo a genetic mutation that caused a change allowing the organism to operate better in its environment then it would be more likely to reproduce and pass that mutation down. This itself would be evolution.  I believe that evolution is theory. I believe this because it is unknown what the original form of life on earth is. This in itself makes it impossible to draw life all the way back to the original source to show exactly how evolution started or exactly began. This is a tricky question though because while ev...