“Explaining how the organisms of today got to be the way they are, evolution helps make sense out of the history of life and explains the relationships among species” (page 2)

I think this line from the paper is a good introduction to the concepts and ideas that I learned from taking all my different psychology courses. In courses like social psychology we learned about how the relationships between different groups of people have changed overtime whether due to diminishing geographical isolation, technology or languages. I think that evolution plays a huge role in how people are able to interact and this was demonstrated in that course. In brain and behaviour we learned how humans brains have changed compared to our ancestors and how our thinking and other higher cognitive functions have continued to evolve and adapt to our heightened industrialized world. It is also interesting that in both my psychology and biology courses we have learned the comparison in evolution between humans and primates. Since these are our closest living relatives it has always been interesting to learn the different scientific perspectives on why we have evolved differently and yet still remain to have so many similarities.

Like mentioned in the article, things like insect resistance to pesticides or microbial resistance to antibiotics are things that have occurred through the process of evolution. Understanding how this process works allows us to better be prepared for these situations so that the drugs and chemicals we use will still be useful in the future. Looking at antibiotic resistance we learned a lot about that in my Cells and Development Lab as well as Microbiology class. It is important to learn how even organisms as small as bacteria and cells can adapt and evolve to overcome the things designed to kill them. Certain antibiotics were designed to target specific structures on bacteria but the bacteria that developed mechanisms to evade this were able to stay alive and reproduce more hence why by understanding evolution we must be able to further our ability to create new therapies and drugs that will continue to work in a different way once these organisms become resistant. This blog was very similar to what I have learned in so many of my classes. I think from having a dual major in both psychology and Human Biology it gave me a blend of different perspectives on this topic. I think that in all fields of science you can see the immense role that evolution has and how it relates to all different aspects of not only human beings but all species and how they continue to coexist with each other.

In addition, during most of my genetics course every new topic we discussed related to evolution in some way. Whether it was the patterns of how traits are inherited to why we display certain traits compared to others at higher frequencies evolution clearly was a prominent discussion in that course. I think that no matter what your major is in the science field evolution will always be a prominent topic to learn about because its impact on all different kinds of sciences and aspects of everyday life is so immense. I think this paper was a perfect example of the reasoning behind why throughout my academic career evolution was such a major role in everything I learned and I think that it is such a fascinating topic to learn about because it often happens without people understanding why until the benefits are occurring like the now highly understood Sickle Cell Anemia situation.