Reflection on the film “What Darwin Didn’t Know”

The film “What Darwin Didn’t Know” explains the advances that have been made in evolution since he passed.  With new technology scientists have been able to find exactly which genes between and within  species have mutated and changed. Through knowing which genes have changes and how great the changes are, scientists are able to figure out how these changes may have occurred.   

Darwin was able to make observations and make assumptions about why different species came about, but he was never able to explain how his theories work.  Darwin saw the variation in the finches’ beaks but he never had a definitive answer of how the variation occurred.  But, now scientists can see exactly which genes have changed.  Evolution of traits also helps locate the genes for the various traits.  They also know how they changed, mutated.  Mutations occur in every species, if they did not there would be no variation, if there was no variation there would be no natural selection because the species would all thrive or become extinct, because, they would all be the same. The environment is always changing so species need to adapt in order to survive.  

Change is the driving force behind adaptation.  The theory of evolution specifically natural selection explains why traits are selected and their dominance.  The genetic understanding changes explain how these traits become available to be selected.  Being able to pinpoint exactly what these changes are by comparing sets of DNA side by side allows scientists today to go farther with the new information available and build on Darwin’s many theories.  Because of the advances in DNA coding scientists have built of Darwin’s observations and theories and started filling the missing pieces such as how this process of evolution occurred.