http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150109093727.htm
Published: January 9th, 2014
This article looks into why color variants occur in populations, a question that scientists are still trying to solve. One color should eventually replace the other through natural selection as it becomes more beneficial to the species, but that is not what happens. Instead, these differences continue to exist. In order to answer this question, scientists studied fish of the same species that varied in color, a darker fish and a gold fish, with the gold color being dominant but the darker color more common. They placed the fish on both dark and light surfaces and recorded changes in the shade of their color. The results of their experiment were that the darker fish could alter its color to better fit its environment while the gold colored fish could not. This shows that differences in the ability to change colors to match environments could be an important way that color frequencies are created and maintained in the wild.
This article relates to our curriculum because natural selection and evolution are two main points in our current unit, and it is about the study of evolution of color in animals and why natural selection does not appear to occur in some populations.
Can you relate this to humans? Light skin tones, mainly in european countries, do not appear to blend in to the environment. Could there be a benefit to light skin in those areas, or is it merely by chance that light skin appeared in those populations?
ReplyDeleteI found no research like this on humans, but I did find that skin color in different areas was influenced by ultraviolet radiation levels when humans first migrated to different parts of the world. Although skin tones do not blend in to environments there are benefits to having certain skin tones in those areas.
Deletehttp://faculty.washington.edu/charles/562_f2011/Additional%20Readings/Jablonski%202000.pdf
Is color variation within a population predicted to lessen or within a species as a whole? For example Irish and Indians are of the same species, yet they have different skin coloring since they live in such different climates. Despite the climate difference will Irish and Indians have the same coloring eventually, or will the coloring of Irish people even into a uniform tone and the coloring of Indian people even into a separate uniform tone?
ReplyDeleteNo, Irish and Indians will not have the same coloring eventually because human skin coloration is thought to have evolved over time in response to ultraviolet radiation levels in different places. Since they live in such different places with different UV radiation levels, they will not eventually have the same skin tone.
Deletehttp://faculty.washington.edu/charles/562_f2011/Additional%20Readings/Jablonski%202000.pdf