Week 3 Reflective Response- Evidence for Evolution

This week in AP Biology we learned about the evidence biologists have collected to support evolution. We also learned the difference between a hypothesis, theory, and law. A hypothesis is a testable statement about the universe. a theory is a major unifying framework, which is supported by all currently known facts.  A law is a deduced fact that will always be true in certain circumstances. I was at first surprised to find out that there are no laws in biology, but I then realized that anything in biology could be proven wrong at any time. This explains why there are only hypotheses and theorems, but not laws.

One piece of evidence for evolution is Peppered Moths. These moths come in two varieties; dark and light. Before the industrial period in England, light colored moths survived better in the lighter colored environment, so there were not as many dark moths. When England began burning coal and polluting, the forests and trees got darker, allowing the darker moths to become more likely to survive, meaning there were more of them. Then when there were laws against pollution, the light colored moths were better suited for the lighter environment, so there were more of them.

We also learned about the fossil record, which is stored in the layers of sedimentary rock. These layers get older and older the further you go down, and so do the animals. We can dig into rocks and find animals that do not live anymore. This supports evolution by showing the links between the bone structures of different species, ans also relates to Big Idea 1.B: organisms are linked by lines of descent from common ancestry.

References:

https://www.britannica.com/science/fossil-record

https://prezi.com/kdtstsl3uat5/copy-of-ap-bio-evolution-3-evidence-of-evolution/