Blog #3: Biological Statistics and Evolutionary Evidence

This unit, full of exciting new information, made me realize where we come from and finally, why we are considered to come from monkeys. We learned all the way from statistics to the different lines of evolutionary evidence. I got to learn about Darwin's theory in depth, and how he did not only create the drawing where monkeys turn into humans; but I learned how we come from one common ancestor and about the process in which organisms change over time due to heritable physical or behavioral traits. Apart from the theory, we learned about the different lines of evolutionary evidence. The line I focused on was fossil record, and by studying this specific line I learned that we, humans, are over 2.8 million years old! This was all discovered to a jawbone fossil discovery in Ethiopia! You can check out more facts in my video here. I learned about species distribution, which is another line of evolutionary evidence, in Regina Zambrano's video. She explains how animals are distributed throughout the world according to their needs. For example, flamingos reside in most parts of the world, but only in those where they can find alkaline water and mud in a tropical and sub-tropical biome! With Alvaro Palazuelo's video I learned about another line of evolutionary evidence: DNA comparison. Without watching this video, I would have never thought that the DNA of a dinosaur could be compared to an animals that exists right now! He proves that the T-Rex and chickens are related; this was found out by comparing their DNA! I thought that almost all of the information on evolution was found out by fossils and history, but I didn't know that scientists use DNA to discover the past too. With all of these lines of evolutionary evidence, Darwin was able to prove that all species on Earth come from a common ancestor. So we are supposed to be related to the grass in our garden, literally.

As we went further into evolution, we got to learn about statistics and probability too in biology! This was a great opportunity for me, since I'm only taking calculus this year and I don't know anything about stats. I was able to apply the basics of statistics that I already knew about to biology, which was cool. The activities where I used math the most were the Punnett squares, where I had to specifically calculate, multiply, and add the possibilities of specific genotype and allele frequencies. With stats I was able to predict the probability of the genotypes, which was cool, since I got to learn about how the human genetics system works. Apart from the Punnet squares, we worked with Excel or Google Sheets to create graphs to analyze data with ranges, modes, medians, averages, maxes, mins, standard deviations (which I just learned about here) etc.

These activities in Excel and graphs helped us create an even bigger project where my group and I (Eugenia and Isa) analyzed the abiotic and biotic factors in the Sahara desert! We learned how abiotic factors affected features such as camel population, desert area size, palm tree population, and more! We were able to show these results through graphs; therefore, I got to practice my statistics in biology again. When we analyzed these final graphs, we were able to detect trends between the abiotic and biotic factors, so we learned more about the cause of variation and distribution of populations in the Sahara Desert. Overall, I was really satisfied with this unit. Even though I didn't find it very clear during the unit what we were supposed to learn, I was happy with the final product of how we blended statistics into evolution and the distribution of populations in a biome.

#biology #statistics #evolution #darwin #bioASFM #stats #fossil #humans