ecology
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The movement of matter and energy around the planet is very important, and its study draws on geology, and meterology in addition to chemistry. Energy tends to flow upwards from plantlike producers to herbivores to carnivores before being decomposed by detritovores and cycling back into energy usable by producers, in addition to the photosynthesis or chemosynthesis used by producers to produce energy. Like energy, compounds vital to life s...more
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The Tree of Life must be discovered through rigorous analysis. Genetic information is crucial because appearances can be deceiving, and species that look similar can prove to be genetically very dissimilar and not share recent common ancestors. Two criteria, used to determine what the "correct" Tree is, are simplicity and whether the tree maximizes the probability of observing what we actually see.
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Evolution plays an important though underutilized role in medicine. Evolution guides how our bodies respond to various treatments, how pathogens will respond to treatments, and how pathogens' responses will change over time. Pathogens oftentimes will evolve to an intermediate level of virulence where they become strong enough to infect a host and reproduce, but not so strong as to kill the host before it can spread the pathogen.
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Breeding strategies differ both among males and females of the same species as well as among different species. The difference in breeding strategies among members of the same species can usually be linked to frequency dependence. If the species is at evolutionary equilibrium, the relative fitnesses of these different strategies will be identical. Differing strategies have been found at the level of the gamete as well as at the level of di...more
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Coevolution happens at many levels, not just the level of species. Organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts serve as good intracellular examples. Other living things make up a crucial component of an organism's environment. Coevolution can occur in helpful ways (symbiosis) and in harmful ways (parasitism). Many factors can influence coevolution, such the frequency and degree of interaction.
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Development is responsible for the complexity of multicellular organisms. It helps to map the genotype into the phenotype expressed by the organism. Development is responsible for ancient patterns among related organisms, and many structures important to development shared by many life forms have changed little over hundreds of millions of years. Development is expressed combinatorially, allowing a relatively small amount of genetic inform...more
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Mating systems and parental care vary tremendously from species to species. Every species differs in how it protects its young from predators and provides its young with food, if it does so at all. The physical environment as well as behavioral dynamics in intraspecies relationships all influence parental care. Often the mating system, which sex is dominant in mating, and whether fertilization is external or internal will determine much of...more
