Natural Selection

My Biggest take away from this week was that in many circumstances species in isolated environments often evolved from one common species, for example the finches we learned about. One species evolved into 13 due to natural selection because of very diversified environments and food sources. I wish I knew more about how these changes actually came about. What specifically causes such extreme deviations in terms of physical attributes and traits. But that relates more to DNA coding and genes as a whole. I know that these different traits are caused by mutations, but what specifically causes those mutations. How is it that the genes of one animal can be so different than that of the generation before.  Another important aspect that I learned about natural selection and evolution as a whole is that it doesn’t have to take millions of years for a species to evolve. As demonstrated by the finches, they were able to be selected in a single generation after a single endangering event. The species became a more predominately large beaked group after the smaller beaked birds had a food shortage and then became a smaller beaked group after their food became more abundant and the larger beaked birds less abundant.

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