Evolution Today

The guided notes for “Evolution Today and Tomorrow” start off a little gloomy, but the goal is not to dwell on changes and potential threats, but to instead think about how these potential changes might change the course of human evolution! If you think back to all of the evolutionary changes we have discussed in this class you might notice that a large number of changes were brought on by changes in climate and food availability, changes in diet, and/or exposure to disease.The questions for this week are:1) Do we have the potential to buffer ourselves from the changes that we are going to have to face in the future, or will these changes lead to changes in our species?2) How you think humans will evolve in the future. This can be based on outside reading (for example, is gene splicing going to change humans? If you use an outside source, please site it!), our course material (are all humans going to be carriers of the APO1 Milano gene in the future because we will adapt to our high fat diets?), or just general knowledge (are human populations going to have exceptionally high rates of poor eye sight because there is not selection against poor eye sight thanks to the use of contact lenses and glasses? Is a lack of selection still evolution?).