Evolution with Delaney!

https://food.ndtv.com/health/dolphin-proteins-may-prove-to-be-beneficial-for-human-health-1664440 https://sonoraninstitute.org/events/dragonfly/ This week we discussed male-male competition. There are various types of male-male competition but I have chosen to discuss sperm competition and infanticide. Dragonflies display sperm competition because the males actually remove sperm from another male before they mate. An alternative to removal is to rearrange the other males sperm so that there is a better chance of the mating males sperm success. Dolphins on the other hand occasionally engage in infanticide. The adult male dolphins drown the young by pushing them underwater so they cannot get air. This allows for the mothers to be available for breeding once more. Both forms of these male-male competition aim to give a male a better chance at producing offspring but does not have species propagation in mind. The main difference between the two types of competition discussed is that in spe...

A peacock in Ranthambore, India. Travelographer 1 | 500px Prime | Getty Images In the Common Descent podcast they discussed various aspects of sexual selection . At the beginning of the discussion they compared sexual selection and natural selection. One trait that they used to describe sexual selection is that it only cares if you survive long enough to have babies. I was a bit confused about this statement because I was under the impression that is what all types of selection cared about most. They didn't go into a lot of detail on that statement but I would be interested to hear a further explanation. Later on in the podcast they discussed sexual conflict . This was described as opposing selective pressures for different sexes of the same species. The different sexes essentially have different goals when it comes to reproduction. I thought this was very interesting because oftentimes when I think about species propagation I do so with the mindset that every individual just want...

https://ib.bioninja.com.au/standard-level/topic-5-evolution-and-biodi/51-evidence-for-evolution/speciation.html Today we discussed speciation and the complexities of determining what is a species and what is not! A few questions I was left with are: 1) Where/when do subspecies come into play? 2) When the news says a new species has been discovered what parameters are being used? 3) At what point do we conclude that there is sexual dimorphism? Do all of the males need to have a certain characteristic (for example: the fancy trait in the Cornell Ornithology Lab video) or can some males exist without the characteristic?