Beak of the Finch questions.

Part 6

Your Name: Viktoriya Yakonska

PART THREE: G.O.D.

18.The Resistance Movement
1. What are the main points of the chapter? (List the main ideas presented in the chapter, not just the topics).
invention of pesticides has driven waves of evolution in insects all over the planet
antibiotics act in the same manner as pesticides where bacteria create a resistance to the antibiotics and evolve
passing on their successful genes through each generation
2. What does this chapter tell you about arms races?
There is an arms race where species are evolving and products are created in order to try to control them but there is a
resistance to these products and so new products are created and there is a new movement of resistance because evolution
is occurring so rapidly and thus it is back and forth in this cycle.
3. When did pesticides/herbicides come in to popular use? (252)
The first was used in 1940 and then new chemical inventions grew greatly in the 1960s and 1970s.
4. What are the four classes of adaptations by insects? (254-5)
First it can dodge. Second it can evolve a way to keep the poison from getting under its cuticle. Third it can develop an
antidote. Fourth it can sometimes find an internal dodge.
5. Explain you cant control them if you dont realize the target you are aiming at can move (257)
To explain this statement it means to understand that change is occurring all the time in every line of species so a lot of
hybridization is also going on meaning evolution is happening all the time everywhere. So it is hard to aim for a target if
the target is constantly changing.
6. What is the Levin Archipelago? (258-9) and what was learned from this study?
The Levin Archipelago is a year long study conducted by Bruce Levin in which he observed the E. coli evolution taking
place within his own body. The microbiologist conducting the study identified a total of fifty-three different
strains of the bacteria that colonized. When the bacteria are under stress they use their jumping plasmid genes to
pass resistance genes back and forth at a great speed.
7. How is a human like an entire Galpagos archipelago concerning AIDS? Note that scientists are using population
genetic analyses (similar to the ones you learned about) to study AIDS within individual humans.

A human is like an entire Galpagos archipelago concerning AIDS because it harbors an increasingly diverse group of
viruses after the first one has invaded it. The first virus particle to invade evolves into a swarm of variant strains.
8. How does hybridization assist in the evolution of flu viruses? (262)
Hybridization assists in the evolution of flu viruses because when two strains of viruses meet they hybridize and the new
virus is changed enough to evade the attacks of the human immune system and spread.
9. How are humans influencing evolution? (262-6)
Humans are influencing evolution by aiming at a species, creating a selection pressure and thus driving its evolution.
Killing the elephants with large tusks selected against this feature and thus more elephants that were tuskless passed on
genes. The same is the case with catching large fish over small fish. Humans influence evolution by trying to control
things and thus creating selection pressures which develop resistance movements.
19.A Partner in the Process
10. What are the main points of the chapter?
Humans have affected the plant and other species in an exponential and dramatic way.
11. How have humans affected the evolution of Biston betularia? (271-4)
Humans affected the evolution of Biston betularia because of the pollution they created. Black mutant moths swept up in
large proportions in moth populations where the air was black from the soot of the industrial revolution.
12. When were the five major extinctions? (276)
At the end of the Ordovician period, at the end of the Devonian and Permian, at the end of the Triassic and the Cretaceous
and now again it is occurring.
20.The Metaphysical Crossbeak
14. How are humans different than other animals? (278+)
Humans are different from other animals because they are self aware and have a heightened sense of consciousness.
15. What were the major morphological changes in humans? (280)
Major morphological changes in humans are the opposable thumb, the voice, the hind-legged stance, human face changes
where the brain and skull expanded.
16. What is science and how does it help us? (286)

The expansion and ability to learn taking advantages of myraid niches is science. Science formalizes our special kind of
collective memory, or species memory, in which each generation builds on what has been learned by those that came
before.
17. Where does the phrase, a square peg in a round hole come from? (289)
This phrase comes from the idea that we try to find work for which our talents and abilities are best suited for.
18. Discuss the rapid accumulation of change is not always progress, and forward motion is not always an advance.
(289)
What we are doing to the rest of creation which evolves more slowly is opposite the the progress we have made. We are
like the species that can only survive by causing upheaval around it and so it is in constant danger of extinction.
19. How do cheaters win in an evolutionary sense? (291) What is the tragedy of the commons?- (Not in the
book.)
Cheaters win in an evolutionary sense because natural selection turns upon the profit of the individual. What is good for
the individual is good for the flock. However when the needs of the individual clash with the needs of the flock, it
is the individual that succeeds.
20. What is it that humans do best? (293)
We add to what was learned before, raising the old questions again and again and each time building on them as well as
ourselves.
Epilog: God and the Galpagos
22. How many people in the US do not believe in Evolution? (295-6) What do they believe? (296)
Nearly half the citizens of the United States do not believe in evolution. Instead they believe that life was created by God
within its present form but about in the past ten thousand years.
23. Does Darwin sometimes doubt himself? (298)
Yes Darwin doubted himself because of the current views at his time.
24. How did astronomers, that were creationists, see the universe at the time of Darwin? (298) Do people believe the
same thing about biology today? (297)

Astronomers imagined an invisible hand in constant attendance, pushing and rolling each world through the sky. No
people dont believe this because this vision no longer seemed compelling after Galileo and Newton discovered
the celestial laws of motion.
25. Discus: The Darwinian view of evolution shows that the unrolling scroll is always being written, inscribed as it
unrolls. (299)
Evolution is constantly continuing to occur and new changes are being made.
26. Did you enjoy the book? Why or why not?
I enjoyed the book and all the interesting research studies that were discussed. However I did not like the additional added
information about the personal lives of the Grants. I found this information to take away from the interesting science and
their lives just did not interest me.
27. What was the most interesting thing you learned from the book?
The most interesting thing I learned from the book is the idea of how fast evolution is occurring and how there is change
constantly happening in front of us but we dont tend to notice it.