Blog Post: Module 3

 Measuring Fitness

I believe fitness is the ability of an organisms genetics to survive and be passed on to further generations. The ability of an organism to pass on its genetics also depends on the environment the organism currently lives in and has lived in.

Some mammals experience a change in coat color when the seasons change in winter and summer. Arctic hares and arctic foxes are good examples of this. Coat color in animals like the arctic hare tends to vary depending on the region and the variability of snowfall. A link below goes to an in-depth article about animals that change coat colors in the summer and winter and explains the genetics and physiological processes that are affected by it. The article states that there are variations in the change of coat color between seasons; some animals change from a full white coat in winter, to a brown coat in summer. Others only have pachy or incomplete appearing changes; some have brown and white patchy coats and others get grayish or blueish coats.The animals that grow fur a coat color inbetween brown and white seem to usually live in regions where snowfall is variable and does not occur at the same time every year. The article also states that it seems like the animals that do not adapt a coat color that accurately reflect the rate of snow fall at a given time is possibly less likely to survive.

One way that we can probalby quantify fitness is by looking at birth and death rates of a population of hares of a specific phenotype. If someone were to pick a certain phenotype of an animal, like an arctic hare and followed a population of them for a few generations (maybe a decade or longer), they could possibly see correlations between the environment and the phenotypes passed down. If the organisms phenotype is considered to exhibit fitness in its environment, then they would see that phenotype passed down. If another phenotype persists more than the others, those phenotypes may work better than others in the given environment, like a hare developing a grayish-brown coat color instead of a full white or full brown coat. Mathematically, this could be done by calculating phenotypic, genotypic, and allelic ratios and observing them throughout time.

Cute bunnies :)

Sources

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.111/brv.12405?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=pmd_nZ_BiLldamzFzrvETjaZIk5K7_U.ytU3UHNsNrYm5OQ-1632529904-0-gqNtZGzNAeWjcnBszQdR

coolantarctica.com 

https://ejphoto.com/arctic_hare_page.htm