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Neil Shubin Your Inner Fish Summary

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Your Inner Fish, written by Neil Shubin, is a novel that discusses the history and development of living organisms throughout Earth’s existence. The underlying theme throughout the book is that all organisms can be traced back to one common ancestor and the evolution of each species from that ancestor to better suit its needs. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of evolution, such as body development, phylogenies, or even small changes in organisms, like teeth or hands. With there being eleven parts to the book, there is a very expansive amount of material covered. However, some of the chapters tied to the content of class lectures closer than others. The recurring topic of the book, evolution, is also a recurring topic in lecture, …show more content…

For example, there are two different forms of evolution; microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution occurs when an organism’s gene frequency changes. Macroevolution, however, is defined by large changes that happen to an organism over a very long amount of time. The basics mechanisms of evolution, mutations, variability, heritability, and fitness, can cause major changes to a species if given enough time. Mutations are errors in the coding of DNA sequences, variability refers to the number of different alleles there could be for a trait, heritability refers to how likely an allele could be passed down, and fitness refers to an organism’s ability to reproduce. If errors occurred often and organisms were able to reproduce and pass down their mutations, there would be a higher chance of change in that species over time. Your Inner Fish makes examples out of not only some of the ways organisms have evolved over the years, but also how certain organs of species have evolved from primitive life’s cells and organs. The eyes and vision can be traced back to light gathering cells on bacteria, ears and hearing can be traced back to how gills on ancient fish were formed, even armor and bones of certain organisms can be traced back to teeth

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