The Guilded Age essays

The Guilded Age essays The Gilded Age brought about many reforms in many ways affecting basically all ways of life of the people in America. The churches started their change with the physical appearance of the churches. The church house went from a homely little building to an extravagant building representing the wealth and prestige of its members. This caused many disagreements in the parish of these organizations. Many people felt that the church, by its stained glass windows and decorated halls, was emphasizing materialism; that god rewarded the righteous with money. Also at the time other religions began to gain new ground and popularity, mostly among and due to the immigrants. Roman Catholicism and Judaism emerged as predominant faiths. By the end of the 17th century the Roman Catholics had nearly nine million people in their churches. The Salvation Army emerged in the 1880s when they came here from England. These soldiers with out arms were possibly the most effective, giving their free soup and s helter to those in need and spreading the thoughts of kindness and sharing amongst the world. Another new church that came about was the Church of Christ, Science, established by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. This church took a different view, based on the healing power of Christianity instead of modern medicine. The YMCA and YWCA grew tremendously in the post civil war era, with the Ys sprouting up in every place with a large enough population to support it. With so many leaps and bounds in the field of religion, one can only expect that something would be discovered. Enter Darwin and all the chaos and bickering his ideas cause. In 1859 he published his highly controversial volume On the Origin of Species which explained his theory on how human beings evolved from lesser life forms into what they are today, quickly becoming known as the survival of the fittest. This theory also specifically contradicted the ideals which were set by...

Directional Selection Is One of Three Types of Natural Selection

Directional Selection Is One of Three Types of Natural Selection Directional selection  is one type of  natural selection  in which the  phenotype  (the observable characteristics) of the species tends toward one extreme rather the mean phenotype or the opposite extreme phenotype. Directional selection is one of three widely studied types of natural selection, in addition  to  stabilizing selection  and  disruptive selection. In stabilizing selection, the extreme phenotypes gradually reduce in number in favor of the mean phenotype, while in disruptive selection, the mean phenotype shrinks in favor of extremes in either direction.   Conditions Leading to Directional Selection The directional selection phenomenon is usually seen in environments that have changed over time. Changes in weather, climate, or food availability can lead to directional selection. In a very timely example connected to climate change, sockeye salmon have recently been observed shifting the timing of their spawn run in Alaska, likely due to rising water temperatures.   In a  statistical analysis of natural selection, directional selection shows a population bell curve for a particular trait that shifts either further left or further right. However, unlike  stabilizing selection, the height of the bell curve does not change. There are far fewer average individuals in a  population that has undergone directional selection. Human interaction can also speed up directional selection. For example, human hunters or fishermen pursuing quarry most often kill the bigger individuals of the population for their meat or other large ornamental or useful parts. Over time, this causes the population to skew toward the smaller individuals. A directional selection bell curve for size will show a shift to the left in this example of directional selection. Animal predators can also create directional selection. Because slower individuals in a prey population are more likely to be killed and eaten, directional selection will gradually skew the population toward faster individuals. A bell curve plotting species size will skew toward the right when documenting this form of directional selection.   Examples As one of the common forms of natural selection, there are plentiful examples of directional selection that have studied and documented. Some well-known cases:   Charles Darwin  studied what later became known as directional selection while he was in the  Galapagos Islands. He observed that the beak length of the Galapagos  finches  changed over time due to available food sources. When there was a lack of insects to eat, finches with larger and deeper beaks survived because the beak structure was useful for cracking seeds. Over time, as insects became more plentiful, directional selection began to favor  finches  with smaller and longer beaks that were more useful for catching insects.Fossil records show that black bears in Europe decreased in size during periods between continental glacial coverage during the ice ages, but increased in size during the glacial period. This was likely because larger individual enjoyed an advantage in conditions of limited  food supplies and  extreme cold.  In 18th and 19th century England peppered moths who had been predominantly white in order to blend in with light colored trees began t o evolve into a predominantly dark species in order to blend in with an environment that was becoming increasingly covered with soot from Industrial Revolution factories.