Human Biology Adaptation Research Paper Purpose The purpose of this assignment is to ensure that you feel comfortable using vocabulary from evolutionary t

Human Biology Adaptation Research Paper Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to ensure that you feel comfortable using vocabulary from evolutionary theory and communicating anthropological knowledge in writing (Course Learning Objective #1). It will also help us further our efforts at meeting Course Learning Objective #4, which is to ensure that you can explain how anatomical traits in non-human primates, human ancestors, and modern humans are the result of evolution.

In this assignment, you will identify an example of a human biological adaptation that interests you from either the scientific literature or from a recent news story. You will fully explain what that adaptation is in your own words, and then identify and explain the environmental selection pressure that led to that trait being adaptive (beneficial). Recall that a selection pressure is some factor in the environment that causes differential reproductive success in a population. Your example could be of a human adaptation on which current selection is occurring (e.g., some people have the beneficial trait while others do not), or it could have been some trait that was selected for in our evolutionary past, and as a result we all have the adaptive trait. After a selection pressure has acted on a population for some time, the selection pressure may have been so strong that all individuals carry the same adaptive (beneficial) trait–that is when a trait reaches fixation. You may have to work to find out what the selection pressure is in your example; the authors may not explicitly state it, and they may focus instead on the adaptive trait itself–so just do your best to logically figure out what the selection pressure may have been!

Skills

This assignment will help you practice the following skills:

Module-level objective 1.3: You will be able to describe research findings in biological anthropology using terms from evolutionary theory.
Module-level objective 4.3: You will be able to describe how aspects of modern human biology relate to the environmental selection pressures that created them.
Tasks
Search the internet for a recent (past several years is fine) scientific journal article or news article that describes some modern human biological adaptation (some trait that is beneficial in some way in our species). It could be a trait found in just one particular population or group of people, or some trait that we all carry.
Describe what the adaptive human trait is.
Identify and explain what the selection pressure is (or was) that made the human trait adaptive (beneficial). Again, the authors may not state what the selection pressure was, and it is your job to figure it out!
Your whole written submission (explanation of the human trait, explanation of the selection pressure that made it adaptive) can be a paragraph to a page in length. Be sure to proofread and make sure that the article is in your own words.
Provide the link to the recent news story or article.