Shapes of the Beaks of Birds on the Galapagos Island
shapes of the beaks of birds on the Galapagos Island
The reason for the change that Darwin saw in the shapes of the beaks of birds on the Galapagos Island is a protein responsible for the length of the beak, called Calmoduline, and a protein responsible for the thickness of the beak, called Bone Morphogenetic protein 4 (BMP4), which is present in birds and encodes the shapes of the beaks in the embryonic stage, meaning that it is an adaptation and not an evolution, because it is an already existing protein and its encoding of the shapes of the beaks changes according to the environment.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1098095
According to epigenetic studies, nature affects the way genes are read, activating traits that were dormant, or extinguishing traits that were activated; But it has been there since the beginning, and it is activated and deactivated according to the influence in the environment
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Environmental Influences on Gene Expression
Internal and external environmental factors, like gender and temperature, influence gene expression.
I’ll leave this here for a bit (because it’s a famous example) before responding to the rest of the so-called evolution icons.