Download Final Exam Study Guide - Evolution, Disease, and Medicine | 704 110 and more Study notes Environmental Science in PDF only on Docsity! Evolution Disease and Medicine study guide Based on Course info :Focal Topics Introduction to evolutionary fitness o Evolution – living things change over time o Must survive reproduce and change o Optimal situation – live forever reproduce immediately reproduce continuously o Mechanisms of change in evolution o unidirectional o bidirectional o adaption – change in response to a selective pressure o bottle necks o genetic drift- variation from generation to generation, resulting from random sampling o variation o mutations o Natural selection and adaptation o Happen under a constraint o Characteristics which give a fitness advantage will increase in frequency over the following generations o Results in adaptations that tailor organisms to survive within their environment o Adaptation does happen as a result of selective pressure, but the traits are not caused by it o Bottleneck events o a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources Exaptation o when something happens that causes a certain result and then something else comes in and it looks like the new thing caused the result that was really caused my the old thing Selective transparency o Things that can’t be affected by selection o Anything that doesn’t impact fitness o alzheimers Evolutionary fitness with competition o competition- 2 or more species use or seek the same resource to the detriment of both o Predation – one animal species eats all or parts of another animal species o Mutualism – 2 species live in close association with one another to the benefit of both o Co-evolution o Coevolution is prominent in some areas (coevolutionary hotspots) but not others (coevolutionary cold spots) o Signs and symptoms of infectious disease o defenses o novel environment o genes o design compromises o evolutionary legacies o infection Co-evolutionary arms race of infectious disease o hosts and pathogens in constant evolutionary battle o as hosts evolve defenses, pathogens evolve manipulations and way around defenses o co-evolution o Treatment of symptoms vs. treatment of pathogens o defense or manipulation o is the symptom doing more harm then benefit? o Cost benefit analysis Injury o avoid injury o anticipation of dangerous situtations o Physiological fear responses and endocrinological preparedness o Toxins o people have varying susceptibility to different toxins o learned avoidance of toxin o Designed toxins are sometimes more toxic than natural ones because we designed them that way o Allergy and immunity o Part of immune response, so allergy is probably a defense o Over the history of immune memory, sometimes while fighting genuine threats, your immune system also finds “bystander molecules” and accidentally learns to react against those as well as the real threat o Cancer o Cancer cells are just normal cells that grow and proliferate ‘too much’
