Evolution is a very interesting topic that is studied in so many of the classes that I have taken at Michigan State university across many subjects including biology, genetics, and anatomy. My major is human biology and I believe that as biologists the nature of evolution is studied in a very intriguing way. Evolution is defined as change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations showing a clear link to the field of biology. Throughout the biology courses I have taken throughout college, even dating back to high school the Punnett square was always a tool that was used to describe basic genetics and provides an introduction to evolution. Even in the genetics course that I took earlier this summer, the Punnett square was used to describe patterns of inheritance. Although the genetics course went into far more detail using Punnett squares, tracking multiple traits throughout multiple generations, the same basic principles are brought up again and again.

The biological view of evolution provides an interesting look into the life on earth. I have always thought of evolution through the lens of biology as natural selection and the ability to survive and provide many, many offspring to inhabit that planet. The concept of prefect organisms was always fascinating to me. The ideal climate or environment for life to proliferate, the sometime drastic changes that occur in a short period of time to certain species in order to continue to survive, all were things that intrigued my throughout the complicated studies in college. Human variability specifically through the biological lens is fascinating as well, providing answer to the simple question of why I look the way I do compared to others. In my research this week I tried to find a definition of human biological variation to help with this blog post. I found that human biological variability is simply the diversity of biological and genetics differences observed in the human population. And that anthropologists like ourselves are asked to study human biology to “better understand the extent of human biological variability, to explain the mechanisms that create and pattern this variability, too relate variability to health and disease, and to understand the sociocultural factors that interact with and are influenced by this biology.” ( https://www.accessscience.com/content/human-biological-variation/757576) This definition was satisfying to me in order to relate this topic tour course.

Throughout this week’s videos and readings, I found that it didn’t drastically change my view of human biology, but it did provide interesting and helpful resources to better understand the genetics we need to know for this course. Although I am fresh off a genetics course and most of the video lectures were review for me there was still very interesting specific examples of genetics in action that were helpful to reinforce the concepts for this week. Overall, human biology is a valuable lens to study evolution and genetics in due to the variance of the human genome and the valuable lessons we can learn from how our bodies have changes over the generations.