Week 6 Reflection: Evolution

This week I learned about Evolution. Evolution is the change in a kind of organism over time. Charles Darwin was an English scientist and was the founder of the modern evolutionary theory.  He studied the natural world on a voyage of the HMS Beagle. The voyage was to South America and South Pacific. There, he studied plants and animals, recording observations in the Galapagos Islands. He found many species of plants and animal life unique to the island, but similar species in other parts of the world. He specifically studied turtles and birds. Charles Darwin came up with Natural Selection, which is the change in populations that occur when organisms with favorable variations for an environment survive, reproduce, and pass these variations on. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution can be applied to explain the evolution of adaptations in organisms. I also learned about gene pools. A gene pool is the combined genetic information of all the members of a particular population. I also learned that the two main sources of genetic variation are mutations and the genetic shuffling that results from sexual reproduction. Genetic drift is the random change in allele frequency.