Unit 8 Reflection

 In Unit 8, we learned about the concepts of evolution and natural selection and how this affected and continues to affect ur world today. In order to have evolution, there are a few things that must be established. First, is variation, or differences in traits within a population, allowing, therefore, artificial selection, human breeding, or natural selection, the process of weeding out the not beneficial traits and letting individuals who have beneficial traits survive and reproduce. As a result, allele frequency begins to change, as natural selection weeds out the bad phenotypes, causing the population to evolve. Although natural selection is the most common cause of evolution, there are other causes of evolution, including genetic drift(a random event), gene flow(movement of alleles), mutations, and sexual selection(selecting for traits that improve mating success). Speciation, caused by reproductive isolation, is a result of evolution, as a species can be behavioral, geographically, or temporally isolated, eventually evolving until the two separate populations cannot reproduce. Even though evolution is a very reinforced theory, there is little evidence, only things like embryology, vestigial structures, and fossils like homologous or analogous structures give us proof of evolution. Throughout Earth's history from the Precambrian Era to the Cenozoic Era, evolution by natural selection has played a big role in creating the world we live in today.

During the course of the unit, I have been working on being more assertive as we learned in Unit 7. Throughout the unit, I have been working on speaking more clearly, louder, and generally more assertively. In addition, I have been trying to speak and share more in not just biology, but in other classes like English or math. Furthermore, I am also working on being more on improving my body language and I have also improved on my overall teamwork skills by working more assertively in a group. By the end of Unit 8, I was a lot more assertive than at the beginning of the unit and I hope to improve on my assertiveness as the year goes on.