[gallo]

Quote by: Lilith Let me explain what I mean a little better, I'm not an expert on this and I'm not a scientist, but the way I see it is: If it can adapt, it survives.

As a species. Evolution is a change in the genetic makeup of populations over time.

Quote by: Lilith But like you said an adaptation in an organism then results in increased fitness. So whatever evolves/adapts the necessary means to survive and reproduces then it's the fittest.

I was afraid of that. You have just reduced survival to a tautology, one of the major objections to Spencer's "survival of the fittest." Only the fit survive. Who are the fit? Those who survive.

That's not what natural selection is. Natural selection is differential reproductive success. It is a statistical thing. It doesn't mean that organisms with less desirable characters never survive to reproduce, and it doesn't mean that those with the best characters always survive to reproduce. Differential reproductive success means that those organisms with beneficial characteristics TEND to reproduce more offspring. As a result, beneficial characteristics become more numerous in the population. That is the definition of biological evolution.

Quote by: Lilith But what looks like what's happening with these elephants is being speeded up by mankind.....kill all the elephants with the tusks, they don't have a chance to mate and pass that gene along, so that trait dies out. Sad.

While sad, I don't think that the evolution of elephants is being "speeded up." That would presume that there was a direction to elephant evolution that tended towards no tusks. That doesn't seem to be the case. The fossil record shows that tusks have been beneficial for the Proboscidae, since they all had them, some larger and some smaller. As I said in a previous post,

Tusks always were a matter of evolution. Of the 8 families in the order Proboscidae with about 20 genera, all seem to have had tusks of some sort. Of course, all three of the remaining species in one family and 2 genera have tusks. It seems that they must have been useful, not a matter of beauty.

As I pointed out in that post, tusk less elephants seem to have differential reproductive success today.

Quote by: Lilith Sad, the plethra of wildlife that is already become extinct due to man. Been studying about the Florida Everglades, that's a real travesty. We are actually pumping freswater into the ocean! so people living in South Florida wont get flooded! and due to overpopulation, the South Floridans experience water shortages! Does not make alot of sense to me....anyhoo, back on topic....*blush*

I agree.