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Issues In Evolution Paper

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Malea Neese
UF ID 5969-0906
Issues in Evolution Paper One: Topic Four
Daegling
Discussions on evolution have been invaded with the concepts of “adaptation” and “fitness” since the introduction of the Darwin-Wallace natural selection theory. However, pinning down exactly what these concepts mean serves to be more difficult than anticipated. The terms are indisputably related, and they are often conflated to have the same meaning. (Campbell 1) This is unfortunate for those who wish to explain these terms as conceptually separate ideas, as Campbell (1983) attempts to do in her paper. In this paper, I will attempt to communicate my own thoughts on the meaning of fitness and adaptation as separate (yet associated) ideals. I will …show more content…
Most discussions on adaptation end up being semantic ones mostly based on this trend of making evolution and natural selection a tautology. While Campbell’s tautological issue is found in the tying of fitness and adaptation, Gould and Lewontin (1979) express discomfort with the equivalency of adaptation and selection, which I will discuss later in this paper. There is no scientific merit in tautologies, and a redundant definition is not a particularly helpful one, especially when trying to explain concepts of evolution to a layman. The only way to truly understand these concepts is in isolation, if it is at all …show more content…
By this definition, an adaptation does not necessarily need to depend upon fitness for its existence. Now that we have a somewhat working definition of adaptation, I think it would be prudent to examine what fitness means, and how we should measure the fitness of an organism. Fitness of an organism generally refers to its potential to reproduce in relation to another organism in its habitat. However, this loose definition of fitness is very hard to work with when it comes to trying to determine how fit an animal actually is. How should fitness be measured? If fitness is directly related to reproductive wholes (Campbell 1983 Page 64), then fitness could (theoretically) easily be determined by a count of spawn. However, this is problematic for a variety of reasons. Fitness is surely relative to how other organisms in the environment are performing, but it is also very relative to circumstances of the environment

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