Comment on Is evolution only affected by mortality and birth rate?
Lumidaub@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
I’m not sure I understand the question.
does evolution only stem from survival of the fittest, or does our offsprings genetics change at all from the environment
Those are the same thing. The environment determines who can reproduce (most successfully) by selecting the fittest (meaning the one who is best able to adapt to the environment), thus changing the genes of the group in the next generation.
So yes, of course humans would evolve differently if they started living underground. For example they’d probably evolve larger eyes because larger eyes can see better in low light and make survival (and reproduction) more likely.
Or maybe I’m misunderstanding.
bigboismith@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll try to explain my thought process. Due to modern medicine and other aspects driving down mortality, human evolution isn’t really based on survivability (I assume it’s more based on attractiveness currently?). If we assume that people who have less sensitive eyes would have the same survival rate, would people still evolve to have more sensitive eyes?
nous@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Death is not the only driver. Reproduction is by far more important. Death only affects evolution because it prevents reproduction. With modern medicine then sexual selection becomes a bigger driver.
And even then evolution will always happen as mutations will always happen. Even if it is mostly just random drift in features.
We see many aspects of this over and over. Birds on island tend to lose their ability to fly. Larger animals on islands tend to shrink over time. Even isolated humans in extreme places (like high up on a mountain or that do a lot of deep sea diving) show adaptations to their environment. Once isolated even small pressures on your ability to reproduce will affect the population over time. It just might take a lot longer.