ABSTRACT
Evolution is the fundamental paradigm of modern biology; it lays the scientific foundations of biology beyond the visually descriptive. Evolution postulates a demand for resources by living things (organisms) that exceed the environment’s capacity to provide them. The paradigm of economics – scarcity – limits an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce. How well species (different organisms) adapt to the environment depends upon their genes – the building blocks of all living things. Scarcity reduces or precludes the reproduction of organisms that are relatively less effective in acquiring resources. Differential rates of reproduction ensure that the innate (genetic) traits that made organisms more effective in acquiring resources are more frequent in the next generation’s gene pool. Conversely, the lack of reproduction reduces the presence in the gene pool of traits that hindered an organism’s successful reproduction. There is some circularity here that is revealed in the definition of evolutionary success: survival through succeeding generations. Genes make the organism and affect all its characteristics; so, ultimately the survival (ability to successfully reproduce) of species is determined by their genes, and how well suited the genes are within the environment in which they exist.1 Over time, the physical and biological worlds interact, producing changes in the environment to which species must adapt or cease to exist. Gene pools (the relative frequency of various genes in a breeding population) change because of natural selection, and these changes in the gene pool affect the species. Adding complexity, species can change the environment, and environmental changes may have repercussions (favorable or unfavorable) upon the species that created them.
