The Evolution Explosion: How Humans Cause Rapid Evolutionary Change - Book Report/Review Example

Palumbi argues that, drugs might fail because disease evolve while insects overcome some powerful pesticides, human disease develop resistance to the most new drugs in just a few months. Ecological scars of human technology have being made known, insecticides application and the broad evolution consequences of antibiotics and antiviral use have being largely unexplored. According to Human Palumbi, humans have great impact on the evolution, which remains largely accidental, but man’s actions have generated a burst of evolutionary change that adversely affects the entire natural word.

Palumbi claims that there is little doubt that man’s activities are altering the evolutionary processes in which we all depend on. This changes threaten our economic wellbeing and also our natural heritage, by eliminating options to adapt to future environment This changes in turn come back to haunt us and affect our lives either positively or negatively. This book therefore examines the critical and practical aspects of modern evolution. To show the evolutionally changes that man cause Palumbi (2001) used several examples.

For example, in agriculture, man has been trying to increase the frequency of desirable phenotypes by using the most productive plants and animals as breeding stock. In the field of aquaculture, man has employed the same strategies. However, the consequences have always been adverse. It leads to the exploitation of the wild populations. In other worlds, harvesting of wild population increases the frequency of less desirable phenotypes in wild population. This method affects sexual selection because it removes individuals with particular features.

Palumbi echoed the fact that man has been exploiting wild population of animals for food, tools, and clothing right from the time of early man. Man has considers aspects such as the organism size, morphology. Consequently, some particular species are highly affected by the process. This has lead to extinction of some species of wild plants and animals. Palumbi also mentioned something about bacteria. He said that, over time, pathogenic microorganism have developed resistance to many antibiotics, mainly at low levels in natural population, but this can become common within a few years of the commercial adoption of a new drug.

He gave an example of the Gram-positive infections that were all susceptible to penicillin, but in the hospitals today they are the vast majority of infections caused by this same bacteria’s. Palumbi also echoed the fact that evolution in the face of antiviral drugs is very rapid. For example viral RNA could be reduced by the nevirapine drug in only 2 weeks, the after, mutation in the HIV reverse transcriptase gene quickly conferred and raised drug resistance. Now HIV mutants have a doubling time of 2 to 6 days.

This rapid evolution is repeated with almost all other antiretroviral drugs when given singly. This book also be notes that the rapid evolution is not only restricted to pest or disease species. The author claims that through indiscriminate fishing, fish usually evolve a slower growth rates and thinner bodies. This is to allow them to easily slip through gill nets and thus increasing their survival. New species that are transported by humans have also changed to bout local conditions. He gave an example of a sparrow.

He said that this bird was introduced to North