SO ENDS this second weekend looking at the transition of the whale family of vertebrates back to the sea. This complicated evolution, once from the sea to the land, and then back again is an example of adaptive plasticity. The phenotype is moldable clay, that can endure seemingly unlimited changes during evolution, turning limbs into wings in some insects, and wrenching the faces of flatfish from vertical orientation. But the whales are a wonderful example of wholesale remodeling of not just anatomical phenotype, but physiology and metabolism by the direction of genes.
linkedin post 2022-06-29 05:12:48
Nigel Fleming
September 21, 2022