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The Natural Selection Issue
evolution: it's all around us
our final paper for conservation biology
Thomas Crowley and Martin Glazier
To quote the title of this paper, evolution is all around us. The wizardry of evolution has blessed us with a cornucopia of bountiful and often delicious life. Some narrow-minded pseudoscientists blindly insist that “life” applies only to biological organisms. However, due to their constantly evolving nature, one could even say that cultural artifacts such as ring tones, Nu metal and “Crank Yankers” are really more alive than you and me, and provide the strongest support for evolutionary theory.
Take the case of fashion. Garments and humans have been coevolving for millennia. Garments that give their wearers a selective advantage reproduce asexually through the ecologically rich process of “sweatshop labor.” Consider, for instance, the ubiquitous popped collar. In response to species-threatening levels of neck vulnerability, shirts miraculously adapted a seemingly vestigial organ (the collar) into a newly functional role, leading to an impressive decline in neck-dart and vampire related deaths. Due to this innovative mutation, popped collars are now flourishing in all but the most culturally-backward ecosystems.
With their necks safe from zombie stranglers roaming the countryside, humans faced a new evolutionary threat: carpal tunnel syndrome. Crippled by this debilitating disease, EverQuest-playing chronic masturbators no longer had the strength of wrist to open their bedroom doors and gain access to the outside world. Suddenly cut off from society, imprisoned in their dank rooms, they were unable reproduce at the prodigious rate they once did. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, found an elegant vestmental adaptation that saved this vitally important group of alpha males: the yellow Livestrong bracelet. Although the common lore ties the bracelet’s origins to uni-testicled hero Lance Armstrong, this masks its true evolutionary function: the promotion of proper wrist ergonomics. It also functions sphygmomanometrically.
In the late 20th century, increasing industrial emissions led to elevated temperatures around the globe. While this was a boon to the Reykjavik beach community, it severely impacted human’s ability to properly ventilate their waist and thigh regions. Once again, clothing, our symbiotic friend, came to the rescue. Through the magic of natural selection, the jean population diverged, evolving two distinct solutions to the ventilation conundrum. One species, Levius droopius, developed a truncated anterior, causing the jeans to sit lower and allowing excess heat to escape the body through the bikini or “pube” zone. The other species, Levius laceraticus, evolved orifices in the upper ventral quadrants, creating a ripped appearance and allowing for proper thigh airflow. As so often happens in evolution, this latter adaptation had an advantageous side effect; laceraticus was able to blend in with older species of jeans, and thus compete effectively with them for host bodies.
Food and beverages have a similarly symbiotic relationship with Homo sapiens. A particularly instructive example is the evolution of the appletini from its ancestor, the classic martini. In ancient times, olives were thought to work well as an emergency contraceptive, but they were soon found to be poisonous. They could only be made safe for human consumption by soaking them in an inverted conical container in approximately two and a half shots of gin and one half shot of vermouth. Thus the Martinius tanquerayus was born.
This drink found its ecological niche in the stomachs of a hardy group of stoic, brooding, masculine expatriates. The rest of humanity, however, constituted an environment altogether hostile to tanquerayus. A virulent strain soon developed with a crucial mutation: the motor-oil flavored gin had been chemically altered to the far blander, but just as intoxicating vodka. But nature was not finished yet with her masterpiece. From Martinius smirnoffus it was but a short step to Martinius appletinius, a drink that even the most pacifistic duvet-buying dandy can stomach.
Where the case of Levius demonstrated divergent evolution, convergent evolution can be seen in the case of Surfus turfus, referred to by the vulgar as “surf ‘n’ turf.” The turn of the century saw both the steak and the seafood dinner on the brink of extinction. The domination of a recently introduced predatory foreign species – stuffed-crust pizza with CinnaStix™ – threatened to obliterate these two endemic species. In response to this external pressure, the “surf” and “turf” species began a complex process of interspecies mating. The next generation, whose first occurrence was reported in Applebee’s nationwide during the interwar period, began to reclaim the niches out of which they had been forced. The rest, as they say, is evolutionary history.
It follows from these two examples that collar-popping, ripped-jean wearing, appletini drinking, surf’n’turf devouring trendsetters are not merely the most fashionable people, but the most evolutionarily fit. As the authors in our course packet have argued1, evolution has presented species with the stark choice of survival or extinction. Now, humanity stands at such a crossroads: follow these hipster demigods to a new era of effortless style and scrumptious cuisine or be obliterated by the cruelly indifferent hand of natural selection. The choice is ours.1 Conservation biology course packet, Tyco: New Haven, 2005. Pgs. 1 – 796.
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