"Extinction Happens!"

The process of evolution depends greatly on the environment itself. While evolution is the change in a species over time, natural selection is the primary mechanism of change for evolution to occur. When natural selection happens, it determines what organisms are best adapted to the environment in order to survive and reproduce, passing on traits to the next generation. The organisms that pass off those traits withhold genes that are “fit” to comprise the next generation. The environment influences the genetic characteristics of an organism’s population, which changes over time.

Evolution can have three outcomes. The species can survive successfully in the environment and live on for a long time, undergoing few changes. In the second case natural selection may induce speciation, changing the older species into a new one or the third case in which, disruptive selection can occur. “A sudden shift in the environment such as a loss of habitat, a species may not been able to live long enough to reproduce. If this happens, then the species will become extinct, will die and be loss from Earth's future forever.” - Dr. Smith, from the University of San Diego

Ultimately, I’ve concluded that for the process of evolution, extinction is result of the cycle (of evolution) that is not suppose to happen. The primary goal of evolution of is to invoke change in a species so it is able to survive over time and when disruptive selection occurs the species may have a difficult time doing that, which can result in extinction. While extinction occurs in some species, I believe it is also a natural part of the evolution process that just happens. We always hear on the news about animals going extinct and how we should save the polar bears and what not, which makes sense. If there is something about the environment that humans are doing that is contributing to the extinction of these animals then it’s not natural, we should try to save the species. However, if a meteorite comes out of sky destroying all living things that’s just evolutions way of saying “Extinction Happens!” if you catch my drift. Either that or the gods are just really angry at us.

Sources

• http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/selection/selection.html
• http://www.starsandseas.com/SAS%20Evolution/SAS%20natselection/natselec_extinction.htm
• http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/E/Evolution.html
• http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_02
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/extinction/index.html