From an evolutionary perspective, is there a reason for why we like the taste of sugar so much?
The explanation from evolutionary psychology is that sugars (and fats) were rare and hard to find, while vegetable matter is common. People who gorged on rare nutrients when they were available were able to be healthier than people who didn't, and so we evolved to have cravings (and a "dessert stomach") for such foods. Of course, now such foods are plentiful, so we have an obesity problem.
From a evolutionary perspective what defines biological success in nature?
Grandchildren. Fitness is measured in descendants, but a horse that prefers donkeys instead of its own kind isn't fit.
From an evolutionary perspective, is there a reason for why men have more and coarser body hair than women?
Evolution doesn't work according to "need." For example, men don't need nipples, but still have them.At some point in our evolution from an ape-like ancestor, humans lost much of their body hair. Why we retain any at all, and why predominantly in the head, face, armpits, and groin is unknown. Most likely the reasons are less about temperature and more about sex: maybe the hairs maintain our body odor which was used for sexual selection. Today, men are hairier because they produce more testosterone. This hormone is critical for other aspects of manliness, so men with higher testosterone probably had higher reproductive fitness (and, in this case, better physical fitness too) than men without it. Hence men are hairier than women because testosterone is more important for us. Whatever genes or changes are responsible for humans losing our body hair happened fast in women, while men retained hair because they needed the testosterone, not the hair itself.
From an evolutionary perspective, why do people like spicy foods?
Thanks for the A2A and it just so happens that I am a spicey food freak, so I will try my best to do this question justice.First let's explore why some plants are spicey. Some peppers for example produce capsaicin which is a chemical that induces the sensation of pain. This is just one type of evolutionary trait utilized by plants to protect themselves from being eaten by animals, along with thorns, fuzzy or sticky surfaces, poison, fould odors, etc.. At the same time these plants are often brightly colored and sweet smelling which screams to the animal kingdom "eat me!".So what's up with that? If you want to understand how this can make evolutionary sense you have to take a look at the animals themselves. All mammals have capsaicin receptors and so the large majority are discouraged from eating spicey peppers. However birds do not have capsaicin receptors and can quite easily enjoy the spiciest of peppers in complete comfort.So aparently spicey peppers have evolved to attract birds and repell other animals, but it backfired. Some of us humans, especially yours truly, have come to enjoy not only the taste of spicey peppers, but the sensation of pain as well. Oddly enough this little human quirk gave the peppers an unintended evolutionary boost far exceeding anything a few regional bird species could've provided.Spicey peppers which were once isolated in a small region of South America can now be found on every continent around the globe. Humans clear large parcels of land of competition and provide optimal habitats for their beloved spicey peppers. That's a pretty happy evolutionary accident if you happen to be the genes in a spicey pepper.That's right an accident. What in evoutionary terms should've repelled humans instead made spicey peppers one of our favorite foods and propelled the spicey pepper to one of the most successful modern plant species.And so the moral of the story is that there is most likely no evolutionary reason for humans to like spicey foods. It just that sometimes, from an evolutionary perspective, shit happens.
What is evolutionary success? What falls into this category?
There is only one measure of "evolutionary success": having more offspring. A "useful" trait gets conserved and propagated by the simple virtue of there being more next-generation individuals carrying it and particular genetic feature "encoding" it. That's all there is to it.One can view this as genes "wishing" to create phenotypic features that would propagate them (as in "Selfish Gene"), or as competition between individuals, or groups, or populations. But those are all metaphors making it easier to understand the same underlying phenomenon: random change and environmental pressure which makes the carrier more or less successful at reproduction.You will sometimes hear the term "evolutionary successful species" applied to one that spread out of its original niche, or "evolutionary successful adaptation" for one that spread quickly through population (like us or our lactase persistence mutation), but, again, that's the same thing.
From a strictly biological perspective, why hasn't the "gay gene" been eliminated by natural selection?
Theoretically, if there is a genetic basis to homosexuality, why hasn't natural selection stepped in and cause a gene shift away from the supposed 'gay gene'. I'm not trying to troll or anything here, the thought just popped in my head.
Evolutionary Biology questions?
1. Which of the following is true about Charles Darwin? e. he proposed natural selection as the mechanism of evolution 2. Which of the following is true of natural selection? d. natural selection influences the gene pools of populations through acting on (ie selecting for or against) phenotypic characteristics of organisms 3. Which of the following ideas is common to both darwin's and lamarck's explanations of how evolution occurs? c. evolutionary adaptation results from interactions between organisms and their environments 4. Which of the following would be evidence supporting Punctuated Equilibrium and not Gradualism? d. finding in the fossil record, as you look from older to newer geological layers, very few changes in species from layer to layer, except for a few points at which noticable chancges occur over relatively few layers