First Exam Two Weeks from Today

Thursday 19 February

Covers Chapters 1-4, 6-7 plus Chapter 16

and first 9 lectures, 5 discussions, plus 8 Readings:Scientific Methods

Natural SelectionHuman Nature Our Hunter-Gatherer HeritageEvolution of Uncaring HumanoidsSolutionsPopulation GrowthEvolution’s Problem Gamblers

Big Bang 13.7-13.8 billion years ago

Life arose 3.5 billion years ago

Anaerobic versus aerobic bacteria, fermentation, respiration

Photosynthetic prokaryotes, origin of oxygen atmosphere

Endosymbiosis: origin of eukaryotes, plants, fungi, and animals

Reticulate Evolution: Mitochondria, Chloroplasts

Phylogenetic Systematics = cladistics, clades

Importance of shared derived characteristics (synapomorphies)

Monophyletic groups (Polyphyletic, Paraphyletic)

Sister groups, outgroups

Rooting phylogenetic trees

Infer/identify ancestral states — polarize character state changes

Hierarchical classification, Latin binomial nomenclature

Pongid (“Hominid”) phylogeny, blood group types

Organisms are classified hierarchically

5 Kingdoms: plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria

• PhylumArthropoda

• Class Insecta

• Order Diptera

• FamilyDrosophilidae

• GenusDrosophila

• Speciesmelanogaster

• Chordata

• Mammalia

• Primates

• “Hominidae” (Pongidae)

• Homo

• sapiens (the “sap”)

Mabuya Egernia CtenotusEremia- scincus

NA

Pongidae

Dance, Monkeys, Dance by Ernest Cline:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

Pongid Phyogeny

Prosimian

Humans could have been stewards of Earth and all its many denizens,

microbes, plants, fungi, and animals. We have the ability to have

been God-like. Instead, for a short-sighted and selfish transient

population boom, we became the Scourge of the planet. We wiped

out and usurped vast tracts of natural habitat. We ate any other

species that was edible and depleted all Earth’s multitude of natural

resources. In a single century, humans burned fossil fuels that took

millions of years to form.

Humans fouled the atmosphere, despoiled the land, and poisoned the

waters, making the planet uninhabitable even to ourselves.

We trashed the life support systems of this,

our one and only Spaceship, planet Earth.

The disparity between what humans

could have been versus the pitiful

creatures we actually managed to

become is tragic and unforgivable.

If only more people would live up to

their full potential!

Excerpts from Homer Smith (1952) “Man and His Gods”

and Lord Earl of Balfour (1895) “Foundations of Belief”Man did not have forever to harness the forces of the sun and stars. The

Sun was an elderly light, long past the turbulent heat of youth, and would

some day join the senile class of once-luminiferous bodies. In some

incredibly remote time a chance collision might blow it up again into

incandescent gas and start a new local cosmic cycle, but of man there

would be no trace. In Balfours's terms, he “will go down into the pit, and

all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this

obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the

universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘Imperishable

monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than

death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that IS be

better or be worse for all that labour, genius, devotion and suffering of

man have striven through countless generations to effect.” (Italics added)

Greenhouse Effect

Global warming

– Ocean temperatures and acidity

– Sea levels rising– Glaciers and ice caps melting

• CO2 pollution of the air

– Burning oil, deforestation

• Greenhouse gases cause warming

• Water vapor, H2O

• Carbon dioxide, CO2

• Nitrous Oxide, N2O   N=N=O

• Methane, CH4 = 25 molecules CO2

• Trifluoromethyl Sulfur Pentaflouride, SF5CF3

= 18,000 molecules CO2 (half life = 1,000 years)

AVERAGE global temperatures are increasing.

2013 396 ppm

Warming by Decade

James Hansen

Science, 1431 (2005); 308 James Hansen, et al.

2013 1824 ppb

2013 396 ppm

2013 1824 ppb

2013 396 ppm

“The Long Summer”

Milankovitch CyclesInterglacials

°C

°C

°C

°C

°C

Methane Clathrates and Hydrates

H|

H— C — H|

H

H|

H— C — H + O2 —> CO2 + H2O|

H

An international consortium involving Canada, the US, Japan, India, and Germany

H |H— C — H | H

Fracking for Natural Gas H |H— C — H | H

Methane Emissions

Global warming may be slowing deep ocean currents

Precession: At present, earth is closest to sun during winter in the northern hemisphere (11,000 years ago it was closest to the sun during summer in the northern hemisphere) (22,000 year cycle). Orbit itself shifts: Aphelion<——> Perihelion Obliquity: Angle of inclination varies cyclically from 22° to 24.5° with a periodicity of about 41,000 years (currently about 23.5°)

Eccentricity: Earth’s orbit changes from relatively circular to more elliptical and back again over a 95,000 year cycle.

Milankovitch Cycles

MilutinMilankovitch

Watch “TempFast.mov” 128 years go by in one minute!

1.74 times the area of Texas

Warming stresses ecosystems

• Coral reefs, tundra, Arctic

3.5 kilometers per year.

2030

The Big Apple finally goes under