Artificial Selection has resulted in plants that are more disease-resistant, cows that produce more milk, and racehorses that run faster. One must wonder what will come next. In the blog entry answer the following question- Under what circumstances should humans be artificially selecting plants or animals, if any?
First of all, we need to understand what Artificial Selection is. Artificial Selection is another term for selective breeding, and the word itself is self-explanatory... you select your breed with a combination of traits. This term was made up by Charles Darwin in contrast to natural selection which is inherited from generation to generation to improve things such as survival and reproductive ability. As grade.11 Biology students, we have learned about Gregory Mendel and his studies into Monohybrid and Dihybrid crosses and Charles Darwin's study of evolution and natural selection. These studies by these two great scientists has revolutionized our lives. We are now able to manipulate certain phenotypes of offspring by selectively breeding or artificial selection of plants and animals.
Artificial Selection plays such an important role in our lives, even though we don't know it. This break through is having so many positive impacts to what we do in our daily lives. In today's world, people are lookin
g to produce plants and animals that possess desirable traits through artificial selection. Benefits such as high crop yields, being resistant to disease, high growth rate, size and many other phenotypical characteristics are being created so that the organism and species will benefit, and in turn benefit us, humans. The daily vegetables that we eat such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, collards, and kale are all members of the same species, Brassica oleracea. Therefore, artificial selection has started to impact vegetables. In terms of animals, dogs are good examples of artificial selection. For example, artificial selection for increasingly large heads in bulldogs means that many bulldog puppies must now be born by Cesarean Section, where they cut open the mother's womb. This is not a trait that occurs in nature, but with the aid of veterinary medicine, it's possible to select an animal's characteristics. Pigs are also artificially selected by man to produce the largest amount of meat. Right there, is another benefit for humans.
There are boundaries to everything we do in our daily lives. Its unbelievable to know that horses are being artificially selected to run faster in horse races. Why would you want to do that? There has to be a reasonable purpose to what some people do. You can't just go around artificially selecting phenotypes of animals and creating it according to what you want. Animals have their rights too. We shouldn't abuse anything, just keep it under control and be reasonable to what you want. Angela mentioned in her blog that chickens are such a great demand they have enhanced chickens to be more convenient by adding more meat and no feathers. This change causes a lot of problems because now the chickens will be more prone to diseases and parasites, and also mate unsuccessfully due to their disabled wing. Like come on! Are you kidding me? Looking at this picture disturbs me. How selfish can you be? Leave the poor chicken alone! Just let them live their lives properly.Therefore, as I conclude my bio blog, I would just like to say that there is nothing wrong with artificially selecting phenotypes prior that they are in good hands (taken care by professionals), there is a reasonable purpose (e.g. disease-resistant) behind selecting the phenotypes, and that no harm comes to them. These are reasonable circumstances under which humans should artificially select plants and animals.
Work Cited:
http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/dog2.htm
http://www.learner.org/courses/essential/life/session5/closer1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_selection
http://www.biology-online.org/2/12_selective_breeding.htm
