A Dip Into the Archives: Speciation

Photo courtesy of Berkeley 

Today's post is somewhat of a random post...

One of the most interesting aspects of science to me is biological evolution. I didn't become entirely interested in the concept until my mid-20's, a few years ago. The entire process, a process I was never taught about in school by the way, has intrigued me ever since.

As I was coming to terms with the idea and learning how such a complex system could evolve from such a rudimentary beginning(if the word 'rudimentary' even applies here), I began creating my own slides. I'm extremely visual when it comes to learning, so translating what I've learned from a book into my own visual explanation helps quite a bit. Below was the first slide I created on speciation. 

This is a pretty simple and rough approximation on how a section of speciation works, but it was interesting for me to create as a thought exercise. This is something Darwin discovered in the 1800's on his H.M.S. voyage to the Galapagos Islands. As I created this, I could feel a fraction of what he probably felt as the realization hit him, though a lot of the scientific theory would of course build over the following 20+ years until "The Origin of Species" was published. 

Here is a video I later found on the subject, from one of my favorite living advocates of science, Hank Green, who is a lot more informative on the subject than my small picture is.