FINAL PROJECT WOOHOO

Polygenic phenotypes

Misconception: polygons in genetics
What it actually is: the fact that there can be many genes that affect the phenotypic outcome of an individual such as their hair colour and texture, their skin colour, and eye colour.
Here we have a diagram with different coloured strings to illustrate the bell curve that shows us how the phenotypes are distributed, with white being on the far left, going into orange, then black, then purple.

Mating barriers

Misconception: mating barriers are physical barriers keeping members of the same species from having sex.

What it actually is: mating barriers is an umbrella term for many things that prevent sex between members of the same species including the inability to recognize a member of your own species by sight, sound, or availability.

Here we have a bird that has red-colourblindness, so it can't see the red-coloured male than wants to mate with her, but it can see the blue male who wants to mate with her.

Niches

Misconception I had: niches are places that evolve to fit the needs of the animal.

What it actually is: specific areas that are occupied by animals that have adapted to fullfil a need within the ecosystem.

Here we have a giraffe that can reach the tall trees in the desert because it has a long neck, and a lizard that can climb the small bushes because it's legs are short enough that they don't extend too far and slip off.

Clades

Misconception: the distance on the chart indicates the genetic distance between each species.

What it actually is: a simple grouping of specific species to show relationships between the species.

Red queen theory 

Misconception I had: a theory that predicted how mothers raise their young (I don't know either, don't ask...)

What it actually is: a theory based off of Alice in Wonderland, specifically a passage where a character says that you have to run just to stay in the same place. This theory explains the relationship between animals and the parasites that have to keep evolving to be able to keep infecting the ever-evolving host animals.

Here we have Alice running away from a big scary parasite, but neither one is getting very far because they are on the same evolutionary treadmil.

Phenotypic variation 

Misconception I had: phenotypic variation was just another word for different genotypes having different phenotypes.

What it actually is: a biological response to the environment in order to camouflage from predators or prey no matter the season or environmental changes.

Here we have an arctic fox seen through the lense of both winter and autumn.

Carbon dating

Misconception I had: carbon dating is based off of where the bones are in the soil and how old the carbon is. I also thought that carbon dating was an exact science where you knew specific dates.

What it actually is: the measure of how much radiocarbon or C-14 has degraded into Nitrogen-14. This measure is based on the half life of C-14 and the specimen in question is compared to a fresh sample of C-14. This gives an APPROXIMATE date for the speciem.

Convergent evolution 

Misconception: species evolving together.

What it actually is: distant specieal relatives evolving the same traits independently from one another.

Here we have a cat paw, a bat wing, and a human hand. The bones all follow the same pattern, but these animals have all evolved independently from each other. This is also know as having homologous traits.

Speciation

Misconception: the definition of a "species" is cut and dry, unargued, and unaminously agreed upon in the scientific circles.

What it actually is: we don't know 🤷🏻‍♀️ supposedly they are sexually reproductive with only their own members, but then you have lions and tigers making babies, and horses and donkeys making babies, but those babies grow to be sterile, but then you have neaderthals and homo sapiens mating and making viable offspring, so at this point it's undecided and has created a sub-category within species for when this stuff happens. 

Phylogenic trees

Misconception I had: we know which extinct species is at each root because we know the branches are related, so obviously we must know who the father is.

What it actually is: an collection of places where each species split off from an ancestor that may or may not be known because the evolutionary tree is so large and STILL has gaps despite the billions of species we have discovered, because evolution has occurred trillions of times throughout biological history.

Here we have a condensed version of the tree of life courtesy of Wikapedia.