Why is survival of the fittest a misnomer

Instead of using the term missing link , it is preferable to discuss organisms with transitional features with your students. The tetrapod transition from water to land, for instance, involved the evolution of many features — for moving, sensing, breathing, and bearing young in this new dry environment.

This means that the fossil organisms that represent the transition from fin to leg may not be the same organisms that most clarify the evolution of modern tetrapod ears. The fossil record of the early Cambrian contains a large number of animals with rather well-preserved hard parts that happen to be obviously related to organisms alive today. This is the first record we have of these life forms, but the organisms themselves evolved over millions of years prior to being fossilized in formations like the Burgess Shale.

Read more about the Cambrian Explosion in our article on the evolution of the arthropods. Science is a human endeavor. The process leverages human strengths e. Furthermore, science changes with human culture. Shifting values and perspectives may influence what is considered rigorous science. When such cases intersect with evolutionary research, as in the following examples, it is important to be straightforward with students — to explain the whole story so that students are less likely to be misled by antievolution propaganda.

This is now known to be an important observation because these similarities reflect the common ancestry of vertebrates. Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm to make his point, Haeckel modified the drawings of these embryos to make them appear more alike than they actually are. These fudged sketches or versions derived from them have appeared in many biology textbooks since then although most current textbooks use accurate representations of embryos and have recently provided much fodder for antievolutionists.

Learn more about how evolutionary relationships may be reflected in development. The peppered moth Many biology and life science textbooks use industrial melanism in the peppered moth as an example of natural selection. The frequency of dark forms of the moth increased dramatically as coal burning in England blackened the surrounding landscape and allowed dark moths to survive better than light forms.

Correspondingly, with recent increased pollution restrictions, the light moths are once again favored by natural selection and have become more common. Textbooks that use this example often include a photograph of preserved moth specimens stuck to tree bark.

If your textbook contains these photos, note that the wings of the moths may be in unnatural mounted positions. However, these criticisms are misleading. Modern studies confirm that industrial melanism is a genuine phenomenon and that the case of the peppered moth holds up well as an example of it. The frequency of dark moths did rise and fall in synch with industrial pollution, and this was most striking in regions of the countryside with high rates of pollution — just as we would expect if the population were evolving with the shifting selection regimes of the environment.

Learn more about the peppered moths on the Miller and Levine website. With new research and new perspectives, science advances and helps us understand the world around us more clearly. Here are a few updates. Kingdoms or domains Two hundred years ago all living things were classified as either plants or animals. This required shoehorning fungi into the plant kingdom and classifying ciliated protists as animals.

By , this had evolved into a five-kingdom scheme, partly as the result of improved microscopy techniques which allowed biologists to better study unicellular organisms. However, as biologists switched to the view that our classification scheme should reflect evolutionary history, focus on the kingdoms has fallen by the wayside.

Genetic studies and phylogenetic analyses reveal that the tree of life has three main branches. These are known as domains, and include the Bacteria, Eukaryotes, and Archaea. View and review the three domains. In the past century, scientists have learned much about the relationships of living things through lines of evidence that were unimaginable to scientists of the 18th century and have changed their views of the foundations of our classification system.

So, although in many cases, Linnaean classification reflects actual phylogenetic relationships, in many other cases, the original groupings posed by Linnaeus do not represent evolutionary lineages. Learn more about phylogenetic classification. Defining a reptile In grade school, many students learn that reptiles are cold-blooded, land-dwelling vertebrates with scales.

In fact, according to modern biological classification, birds are also considered to be dinosaurs because they evolved from this particular group within Reptilia. So, strictly speaking, reptiles are not just cold-blooded, scaly creatures; they are also warm-bodied, feathered creatures. This can prove to be a challenge in the classroom since the word reptile is used colloquially in one way and scientifically in another.

One solution is simply to keep this detail in mind as a teacher of younger students and ensure that the issue of the phylogenetic classification of reptiles is explicitly addressed when students are older. Another possible approach is to use the word reptile only in the strict, scientific sense, and to teach students that snakes, lizards, turtles, and crocodiles share certain key features like cold-bloodedness, scales, and egg-laying.

Learn more about the phylogenetic definition of a reptile. Great apes without humans It is common to use the words great ape to refer to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. However, this reflects an outdated view of classification. Humans are the closest living relative of chimpanzees and bonobos, and their branch on the tree of life is nested in among gorillas and orangutans. There is no unique set of traits that set chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans apart from humans.

Technically speaking, humans are not just closely related to great apes; we are great apes. There are some topics that students should be encouraged to think about, but not debate in school. These learned behaviors ensure their smaller number of offspring will reach reproductive maturity.

And "survival of the fittest" fails to encompass the subtleties of natural selection in mammals, which Mann points out often involve learned behaviors. In other words, increasing the age of sexual maturity makes little sense in the absence of some other evolutionary adaptation that makes it possible for offspring to develop safely over a longer period of time. This insight is crucial for understanding humans and, arguably, mammals in general not just in a biological light, but a cultural one, as well.

Consider, for example, that a typical pregnant human usually gives birth to just one child, occasionally two, and very rarely more than that. As a result, human parental investment in offspring is huge.

An infant is raised, often by more than one family member, through a very long childhood development and dependency period. This not only ensures that the offspring will reach reproductive maturity, but that it has time to, as Mann puts it, "learn more appropriate behaviors, become better socialized into their society, and by this way become more successful and therefore capable of producing more offspring of their own.

It's therefore likely that the behavioral repertoires of humans, apes and other mammals have become remarkably complex because of the adaptive advantage they've provided as the time between birth and reproductive maturity has increased. On one hand, this allows for evolutionary fitness to be maintained. At the same time, however, it allows room for the possibility of sexually mature, adult animals who have very clearly "survived," to reproductive age who do not actually reproduce — once again highlighting the important distinction between "survival" of the fittest and "reproduction" of the fittest.

Among humans, not having children is often a culturally motivated choice, rather than a biological limitation though both are often at play. People choose not to have children in order to pursue a career, or to raise only a small number of children.

Others forego having children for so long that, when they finally decide to conceive, they encounter complications during childbirth. Despite a prolonged maturation period, these individuals are surviving to maturity without a problem. On the contrary, it can mean anything from the best camouflaged or the most fecund to the cleverest or the most cooperative. Forget Rambo, think Einstein or Gandhi. What we see in the wild is not every animal for itself. Cooperation is an incredibly successful survival strategy.

Indeed it has been the basis of all the most dramatic steps in the history of life. Complex cells evolved from cooperating simple cells. Multicellular organisms are made up of cooperating complex cells. Superorganisms such as bee or ant colonies consist of cooperating individuals.

When cooperation breaks down, the results can be disastrous. When cells in our bodies turn rogue, for instance, the result is cancer.