Hello everyone!
Hoping this new year 2021 have been going good for all of you! I am doing good as well, and staying safe amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Honestly speaking, staying alive each day, feels like a blessing to me. I have written 10 blogs so far for all my readers. However, my blog topics have been highly diverse, ranging from — reviewing crime and sci-fi series on Netflix, talking about natural selection, to gardening, friendships in our lives, elephants and insects. This has brought me to the point of realization that now, I should write my next 10 blogs following a single theme. And the immediate idea that crept into my mind was — a blog series — where I can review books! Books happen to be one of my most favourite things. I love to preserve every book of mine and take care of them — a trait that runs deep in my family. But, these books that I shall review, are going to be extremely special — the one's that touch your heart as you read along and leaves you in a thinking spree after you finish reading it. The first one is my recent read, where I encountered — the golden haired 'Little Prince' with his yellow muffler flowing in the wind. He is a very loveable young boy who has fallen to the Earth from his home, an asteroid — known as B-612. He meets the author of the book 'Antoine de Saint-Exupéry' — an aviator, on the Desert of Sahara where his plane crashes. The 'Little Prince' wants the pilot to draw a sheep for him, so that the sheep can eat the baobab seedlings — that are sprawling all over his tiny home. They could soon destroy his home, if they are not uprooted early on. True that, weeds, like addiction to negative life habits, need to be nipped off right in the bud! Also, smaller chores when left unattended for a long time, could become a huge problem later! The two become friends and, the 'Little Prince' shares his life stories, with the author — about the time he had spent at his home with 'the rose', watching sunsets over and over again, and how he cleaned — took care, of his home. He further, tells stories of his journey, when he travelled from one planet to another. Each of these stories have deeper underlying ideas, revolving around the concept of human relationships and, how grown ups only understand facts, figures and are always concerned with matters of consequence. As we grow up, we tend to forget our childhood memories. A child's mind is easily more curiosity-driven, in comparison to the grown-ups, who seem to have forgotten how to think freely, in the pursuit of their individual careers. The travel diaries of the 'Little Prince' reminds us once more: "All grown-ups were once children....but only few of them remember it." On his visit to the Earth, he met a fox, who was eventually tamed by the 'Little Prince' upon the fox's request. Of course, the young Prince did not initially know, how to tame another living being. When he asked the fox regarding taming to establish ties, the reply that came, hit me hard. The fox said, "You have to be very patient. First, you will sit down at a little distance from me — like that — in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..." Similar instances of sudden outbursts of beautiful values and thoughts are ubiquitously present in this short novel. The journey of reading this novel in a span of two days, not as a child but as an adult, helped me introspect about loss, loneliness, love, friendship in our lives, and made me appreciate the little things in my life, a bit more than before. It is truly an enchanting read! The novel's story has been tweaked and presented as a wonderfully made animated movie for children, in 2015. The movie is now available on Netflix for all the interested souls for viewing. This book would be an amazing gift for the kids around you, to teach them important life values without being preachy. You could read it out to them or let them read alone. Nonetheless, I can totally imagine the bibliophilic adults reading it while resting on a couch, before handing it over as a gift to the kids! Happy reading! Stay healthy and safe everyone!
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Hello everyone!
Today I shall talk to you about two insect species which are known widely as pests. One is the desert locust while the other is a bark beetle. I am delighted to inform you that my popular science articles on these two insects have been published in the quarterly ejournal – Insect Environment. In my first article, I have collaborated with my friend Satyajeet, to explain why desert locusts aggregate to form swarms or why they decide to live alone. In my second article, I have discussed why the green healthy conifer forests turn red over time especially during warmer climatic conditions. I am attaching the link (see below) of the two articles (article 3 and article 11) for you to read and get enlightened about these two fascinating insects! https://insectenvironment.com/issues Happy reading! Currently, the largest land mammal existing on the Earth is the magnificent ‘Elephant’. There are three species of elephants traversing the land, namely the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) and African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). Such an enigmatic and large organism requires tonnes of food and huge acres of space to survive and live comfortably in the wild. Some of the male Asian elephants have tusks while some don't. Those males who don’t possess tusks are called as ‘makhnas’. On the contrary, both male and female African elephants have tusks. They use their tusks to lift objects, gather food, strip the bark from trees and as a weapon to fight for mate or to defend themselves from predators. Unlike the patriarchal human societies that we live in, elephants live in a matriarchal society. Group living with female led herds ensures the survivability of the calves. Adult male elephants are solitary in nature after leaving the herd in their early years. All elephants have a trunk to communicate with the group members either vocally or chemically or both. Interestingly, elephants are the close relatives of the ancient extinct mammoths that once roamed the Earth. Several organisms are known to hold the ecosystem together as a whole. If they are eliminated from the ecosystem, then it has a large negative effect on the balance of the ecosystem. Such organisms are called as keystone species. Keystone species can be of three types: keystone predators, keystone prey and ecosystem engineers. Elephants belong to the category of ecosystem engineers. Let us see how. Elephant’s dung act as a great fertilizer aiding plant growth and as a food for the coprophagic dung beetles, providing them with essential nutrients for survival. Through elephant fecal matter, seeds of plants get dispersed to longer distances. Further, elephants feed on the tall growing plants that can sequester less amounts of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. This enables the growth of the shorter plants which can sequester greater amounts of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby, reducing this specific greenhouse gas’s atmospheric concentration. In the process, global warming gets checked. The population density of the tall quick growing plants are always under check due to the elephants feeding on them at regular intervals. This is how they act as one of the major sculptors of terrestrial habitats. For centuries, poaching of the elephant’s tusk for the ivory has led to a drastic reduction in the number of elephants across the world. The ivory has been used to make piano keys, billiards balls, dominoes, false teeth and even showpieces to decorate homes. Due to such inhumane practices going on since ages, it has been found that, the number of tuskless elephants have increased within the last seventy to eighty years. Thus, now if you happen to go to the forests, you are a lot more likely to see tuskless elephants. Elephants are currently left with very little space on the land to enable their movement especially when they are going through ‘musth’ state. Their habitats have been taken over to build human settlements and to grow food-crops and vegetables. Urbanization has gradually fragmented their natural habitats to the extent that, now we have to build land bridges artificially to ensure the survival of the few remaining elephants. Elephants forage for obtaining their food and sometimes, enter the agricultural fields to feed on the high nutrient containing food-crops. The villagers and forest officials at these rural regions are forced to chase away the elephants using bombs and guns, to save their crops from getting eaten away. Villager’s livelihood at these areas is at stake as a result of the rampant crop raiding activities of the elephants. It has been found through studies that elephants are more than willing to take the risk of entering croplands as they get much higher nutrients at one go, instead of foraging longer distances to obtain less nutritious food. This causes, what we name as, the ‘human-elephant conflict’. This is a big issue that a lot of researchers are trying to solve in different parts of the world. These threats have eventually led to there being only 40,000-50,000 wild elephants now, left in Asia and only 415,000 wild elephants left in Africa according to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). Asian elephants are therefore listed as an endangered species while the African elephants are listed under vulnerable species in the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List. Few research groups in the world work on elephants as it is a non-model species owing to its huge size and requirement of larger land masses to study them in semi-captivity. In India, Professor Raman Sukumar from the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc (Indian Institute of Science), Bengaluru, has dedicated his life to the study of ecology and management of Asian elephants and he continues to do so. I have had the privilege of working with him as one of his students. While conducting my research on chemical communication in Asian elephants, I visited the Bannerghatta National Park in Bengaluru and experienced the life of the semi-captive elephants at the Park. The elephants were having a fun time at the waterhole playing with water. I captured this image as a memory as you can see in the above photograph. Till now, I knew elephants only from the books of Prof. Raman Sukumar but now, I had seen them closely and surprisingly, had developed a significant amount of empathy for them. These beautiful land mammals, being keystone species, need to be protected and conserved. One way of doing so — would be to understand their interaction with other animals and plants and how these interactions can change due to habitat fragmentation and climate change through global warming. We can do so by studying their behaviours in different scenarios in the natural habitats. If we can explore this ecology, then we shall be able to resolve the long standing human-elephant conflict using simple tools adopted from our natural observations. Male elephants traverse longer distances when they enter ‘musth’ — a temporary state marked by secretion from temporal glands, situated close to their ears. During this state, the hormonal changes in the elephant’s body make them aggressive; they start looking out for mates, thereby travelling longer paths. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to provide huge acres of land areas for their movement. To allow the free movement of elephants across different habitats, ‘elephant corridors’ can be artificially made in unprotected areas to connect multiple protected habitats. The currently existing natural elephant habitats and elephant territories should be left untouched. Furthermore, banning the illegal human activities like poaching and hunting of elephants can go a long way to conserve the species. The governments at the global and local level, should take the responsibility to educate the forest officials along with the rural people about the importance of these magnificent organisms in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. The locals can also be involved in spreading awareness amongst themselves through monitoring the elephant numbers using radio collars. In cities, spreading of such awareness about protecting and conserving the elephants, among students, would empower the young minds to actively engage with the locals and help to save this endangered species from going extinct. Elephants are known to have a good memory. They show good task solving abilities. Also, they are known to grieve for their loved ones who are taken away by death. Such emotional empathetic organisms definitely deserve to live a long happy and healthy life. Through this writing piece, I am raising my voice to spread awareness about conserving these magical creatures, not because they need us but because we need them for our survival. I desperately, hope that we soon see the light of the day — when elephant population numbers are reported to have increased significantly over the years through our collective conservation efforts! Hello everyone!
Do you like to watch crime series or read crime books? Here is an Australian series called 'Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries' that is available in three seasons on Netflix. It is surely going to pique your interest quickly. Each episode tells us one crime story. All of these stories are set in the era after the first world war. It is a wonderfully made and smart collection of murder cases solved by the lady detective Miss Fisher, a stylish intelligent feminist woman. She does not follow the usual societal norms as expected from her, especially in that era. She is unmarried at her own will and living her childhood dream through her profession as a detective. Her compassionate and caring side is shown beautifully in the series when she adopts a poor girl, Janey and provides her with good education. The character named as 'Dorothy Williams' who Miss Fisher lovingly calls as 'Dot' is one of the important characters in the story. She has a keen eye for detail which helps Miss Fisher in solving her cases. She joins Miss Fisher as her house maid but eventually becomes her trusted 'Assistant' after proving her mettle in a couple of cases. It is a pleasure to watch her slowly evolve from a simple dependent lady into a brave one with a mind of her own. Other than her, there are a few policemen and constables who have important roles to play in each episode. The elegance in all the characters while they emote and the beautifully pleasant cinematography makes this series a must watch for crime series lovers. Each of the murder stories fill the atmosphere with suspense and strongly grips onto your mind. As Miss Fisher unravels the mystery behind the murder, we wait and listen patiently to her — such is her grace and charm! Overall, if you are a lover of the old world charm, you would definitely not want to miss watching this series. We all have watched several male detectives like Sherlock Holmes, Pradosh Chandra Mitter (Feluda) and Byomkesh Bakshi, to name a few, on screen, solving twisted cases at ease using their 'grey matter' — that we so admire! But tell me truly, how many lady detectives did we read about or watch on screen so far, doing the same? If you have no answer to that, then this, is going to be an absolutely delightful yet inspiring watch for you in your leisure time! Hello everyone!
How many of you love to watch or read scientific fictions? If your answer is yes, then, here is a series named as 'The 100' that you would love to watch in the weekends on Netflix. I had an amazing time watching this one specific American sci-fi series of 7 seasons. Yes, it is a long series but trust me, every episode in the series leaves you on the edge. You will be forced to ask the question - What's coming next? A nuclear apocalypse has destroyed the Earth, leaving behind radiation filled unsurvivable land. The story opens up with the protagonist, Clarke, a teenager, telling us about the state of the Earth in a post-apocalyptic world and how 12 nations have come together to save the last survivors of the human race, living in the 'Ark' - a big space station made by combining 12 smaller space stations. It's been almost a century since the 'Ark' has been supporting human life. Therefore, comes a day when the need of culling the human population starts to be able to permit the survival of the human race on the 'Ark'. In such a grim and daunting situation, 100 teenagers are selected to go down to the ground to figure out if the Earth is now survivable or not. Will these 100 teenagers be able to survive on the Earth with all their acquired Earth skills and expertise in different fields/subjects? Remember that all these 100 teenagers have grown up in the space-in the Ark! They have not seen the Earth closely ever in their entire life! As the story unfolds itself, every teenager's character is revealed to us gradually. The character growth curves are depicted very well with good acting from the entire cast and good stories to push the bigger overarching story forward. The characters of Raven, Octavia, Clarke, Echo, Gaia, Bellamy, Diyoza, Lexa, Monty, Emori and Murphy stayed with me, even after finishing the series. Among the adults, the characters of Kane, Abby and Jaha created more impact in moving the story forward. Even the minor characters are of great significance according to the storyline. A lot of interesting scientific concepts have been infused into the stories for the different seasons. You would find concepts of 'Wormholes', 'Nuclear meltdown events', 'Cryosleep', and 'Artificial Intelligence' well spread across the episodes to intrigue your mind and keep you glued to the screen. The infusion of science, technology and fiction has been done properly, which made me absolutely love this series. Broadly the storyline reiterated the idea of 'Survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence' and 'hope'. I recommend to all to watch this series with your partner/family/close friends or with yourself, on a fine weekend, to not just enjoy the awesome story but to also de-stress yourself from your worldly problems! Hello everyone!
Today, I would be sharing with you all, my experience at the International Animal Behaviour Society (ABS) Conference held on 27th July, 2020. The conference continued till 31st July, 2020. The first talk that I attended at the conference was about, how capturing and handling sparrows can affect their behaviour. The session moved on to a study in vampire bats to answer the question, do first impressions matter or not, in the development of cooperative interactions? The next talk was the first study reporting territorial defense behavior in male pregnant seahorses. In crayfishes, the phenotype of large claw size, represents effective invasions into the freshwater ecosystems. This result was discussed in the next talk. Have you ever thought of what could be the possible factors that determine outcomes of intergroup contests in animals? This was answered in the next talk using banded mongoose as a model organism. The session moved on with interesting talks about autotomy-the ability to deliberately cast off a body structure due to danger or stress as an anti-predator mechanism, aggressive behaviour due to starvation in a certain species of flour beetles, animal weapons used for fighting like bird weapons i.e. bony spurs and its cost on flight behaviour in birds, infanticides in dusky dolphins as observed using drones, dispersal of male vervet monkeys, underwater navigation by path integration using the solar compass by mantis shrimp, armoring of sexually selected weapons in leaf footed bugs, movement ecology of squirrels using multi-sensor radio-collars, tree bugs living in ant defended trees, effect of urbanization on problem solving ability in mice etc. In between the scientific talks, I attended the ABS film festival. These documentary movies were refreshing to watch. The first one was titled, ‘Wings and Wetlands-A story of migration’ that talked about the Indian wetlands-the habitat for several waterbirds and migratory behaviour of these waterbirds. The second one was about the natural history of olive baboons at Mt. Suswa, Kenya. Finally, the third and the last movie came up that told a passionate and inspiring story of the several challenges like corruption, lack of funds etc. faced by the nature conservationists who work with the locals to protect the African elephants. This story truly touched my heart, having been previously exposed to the elephant-human conflict problem, while working on a project on chemical communication in Asian elephants in India. There were over 900 talks in the entire conference that one could attend. Therefore, the second, third, fourth and fifth day of the conference, I decided to first focus on the talks that were more relevant to me and watch them as first priority and then see the other talks as per my time and convenience. The 6 mins parallel talks and 3 mins lightning talks, covered fascinating animal behaviours like female body shaking as an honest signal to males to induce more sperm ejaculations in males during mating as seen in spiders, singing of purring and rattling songs by the male crickets, hitchhiking of nematodes on fig wasps vehicles, individual face learning abilities in paper wasps, antipredator vocalizations in squirrel, foraging in ogre-faced spiders, social foraging in vampire bats tracked using proximity sensors etc. Various other lectures on topics like sociality in gray wolves of the Yellowstone National Park, effect of heat waves on bird singing, effect of urbanization on frog calling behavior, collective maze exploration in rats, trade off in between individual immunity and social immunity in acorn ants etc., went on and intrigued my mind. There were many other fun and interesting sessions like Virtual Q/A (Question and Answer) Sessions, Graduate Student Information Session, NSF (National Science Foundation) Workshop and Virtual Happy Hours, that kept the participants and attendees glued to the conference. This has been my first international conference and my first virtual conference, that I attended. The ABS 2020 organizers did an amazing job arranging a virtual conference amidst the difficult times that we are all in, these days. Kudos to the entire team of organizers! I definitely had a good time! Hoping that I get to attend more such international conferences in the future! Hello everyone!
Today in my fifth blog, I would like to talk about gardening and how gardening helps to heal the highly complex human mind. Gardening happens to be one of my favourite hobbies. I was introduced to this, as a child, when I saw my parents, my Dad and my Mum, taking care of plants ranging from herbs, shrubs to trees in our old house backyard. I was very busy studying and reading books, basically being a nerd all my life, when life hit me hard on my face to tell me, that only studying and reading will not help me and that I need to now, create a healthy work-life balance and maintain my mental health as well along with my physical health. That's when I was introduced to some of my seniors who were plant lovers and grew, maintained plants. I naturally gravitated towards building my own garden. And, lo and behold, I was able to propagate some plants using my basic biology knowledge and was able to finally start my own garden with ajwain plants, money plants and some succulents. I had an amazing time growing my plants and taking care of them, a glimpse of which, you will get to see at my Plant Love section in my website, shatarupa.weebly.com, home page. There is actually a professional practice called as horticultural therapy, that uses gardening to improve mental and physical health of humans. Growing plants not only inculcates in us, a sense of responsibility but also, brings out the nurturing nature within us and in the process, makes us more compassionate as human beings. Also, it diverts our mind towards the plants and how the plants are responding to the care you are providing it, thus, making you forget about the bigger problems in your life and in the world. Fortunately, gardening is not as hard as doing science is, plus, it is cheaper than most other highly unaffordable therapies, which is why, I think everyone can indulge in gardening as a hobby, to live a less stressful life. Gardening as a regular activity has healed my mind from stress, made me a calmer, happier person, and has helped me to improve my focus in my regular research work. We should try to inculcate in the next generation, a sense of responsibility through this cheap and easy hobby of gardening, as even a small space is enough to grow and to maintain plants. This would prove beneficial to the future generation to detox their lives and to be mentally happy. Let me give you a fact. 555 nm (nanometer) i.e. the wavelength of green light is the particular wavelength of visible light that is perceived by the human eyes most efficiently. In other words, our eyes are the most sensitive to green light. Thus, seeing 'green' plants effectively relaxes the human brain and calms us down emotionally. Well, do we need more reasons to start gardening? Hello everyone,
Today, I shall introduce you all to an interesting concept - Trophic Cascades. Let me explain it to you by breaking the concept into 2 simple terms 'Trophic level' which refers to the position of any organism in the food chain and 'Cascades' which refers to a sequential series of events occurring one after another. Trophic cascades are thus, powerful interactions that can control entire ecosystems; they are the indirect effects of the predator on the successive lower trophic levels as a result of the interaction of the predator with their prey, pretty much like the cell signalling cascades. All of you would have heard a bit about the gray wolves of the Yellowstone National Park in United States. They feed on the elks which further, feeds upon the plant covers at the Park. Due to overhunting of the wolves, the population abundance of the wolves had decreased. This caused the elk population numbers to increase, thereby depleting the plant covers to a level, where the other organisms that depended on the plant covers like grizzly bears etc. started to suffer from lack of food ( example - berries provided by the plant covers at the Park ). This is exactly how anthropogenic changes had affected the ecosystem at the Park. Later on, the government understood the problem and after a thorough ecological study of the existing 'trophic cascades' here, decided to introduce some gray wolves into the Park and lo and behold, once again, over time, the Park thrived with replenished plant covers as the elk population numbers were checked by the gray wolves. All the organisms that were associated with the plants gradually increased in population numbers. This concept of 'trophic cascades' can be applied in every aspect of our lives. For example- when discipline meets proper regular work planning, good balancing between personal life and professional life, hard work and a right amount of luck at certain places, then we achieve success. However, if any one department out of the above fails, then a disaster is sure to happen. This is how, every single aspect of our life become equally important and interconnected to one another, just like 'trophic cascades'. I will let this thought linger in your head for a while. With this, I would like to sign off! Hello everyone!
If you all followed my blog so far, then you would probably have realised that my first blog was about the current life and the second one was a sciencey piece. In my third blog, I would like to go back to writing about life. A life without friends is very hard to imagine as we are all social animals at the end of the day. After a hectic day of work (be it at home or at office or in lab),we feel like talking about it to your friends/partners/parents. Mostly our parents do not really understand our work situations - especially those who are not from our field of interest. Henceforth, talking to our friends (who are in the same career as you) and in turn listening to them, helps us to keep ourselves calm and stress - free. Moreover, true friends always tell you the ways to improve yourself and you in turn help them improve themselves. This unconditional love is so important in our lives, considering today's crazy busy lifestyle. This is why we should value our true friends in whatever little way we can as, less is always more! I want to thank my dear friends, who stood by me through thick and thin, in all my difficult times to help me take a few steps forward towards my career and personal goals. I love you all from the core of my heart and want the best things to happen to you and wish good health to you throughout your life. With this, I would like to sign off! Hello everyone!
We have all heard and read about Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and their theory of natural selection. It is one of my most favourite theories. A lot of researchers tried to disprove this theory and came up with their own. However, the multiple evidences for Darwin and Wallace's theory makes it stand its ground firmly as an important mechanism of evolution. Fossils - hard mineralized skeletons, found in plenty, on Earth, indicate the presence of various organisms which are now extinct; that used to roam around the Earth in the ancient ages. These fossils depict the changes in the bone structure occurring over time, leading to formation of several species. Hence, it is a brilliant evidence of evolution occurring as a result of natural selection-selection of the fittest individuals with time. There are a few living fossils which have evolved at a very slow rate, thereby, representing the ancient living organismal forms that survived on the Earth, once upon a time. Living fossils like coelacanth - a primitive fish of the ancient Devonian period, is alive till today, providing us with another scientific evidence of natural selection as the mechanism driving evolution. There are various structural remnants of organisms available that provide direct evidence to the natural selection theory. Rudimentary organs like the eyes of the cave dwelling organisms, appendix in human beings, coccyx or tailbone at the bottom of the human spine etc., are no longer functional yet they exist. At the genetic level, there are genes in the human genome which have multiple stop codons in them, turning it into a non-functional pseudogene. These structural remnants prove that natural selection theory is indeed a mechanism for evolution to occur. Over the last 30-40 years, the enigmatic elephants have been extensively killed, poached for their ivory tusks. This has resulted in only tuskless elephants being left behind in the forests, which further reproduced with time, thereby, increasing the numbers of tuskless elephants. Human intervention, thus, has been responsible for the selection of tusklessness as a trait, in elephants. Further, guppies have been found to develop bright coloured larger spots on their bodies, to attract mates, in the presence of fewer numbers of predators-the cichlids. But, if a large number of cichlids are around, then they develop dull coloured smaller spots on their bodies, to avoid getting detected by the predators. These changes in spot size and spot colour, has been found to occur, in just a few months. A beautiful example of evolution by natural selection visualised in such a short span of time! In the microbial world, several drug resistant microbes like XDR-TB (Extensively drug resistant Tuberculosis), MDR-TB ( Multidrug resistant Tuberculosis) etc., have evolved over time by the natural selection of the fitter microbes - those which possess active mechanisms to survive in the presence of multiple drugs. These are some very interesting examples of evolution occurring via natural selection right before our eyes! Now, let me come to viruses, considering the current coronavirus spread. Viruses are known to us as obligate intracellular parasites. There are 2 types of viruses - virulent and avirulent. Virulent viruses like Ebola virus, attack the host cells and kill them in a short time duration; thus, their transmission rates are very low. However, the avirulent viruses can infect the host cells and survive inside the host cells for longer time durations, causing higher transmission rates. They do not kill the host soon, rather they utilize the host for their replication for a longer course of time, resulting in fast spread to other hosts. In between these 2 types of viruses, avirulent one's would obviously prove to be better survivors and hence, the chances of these one's to get naturally selected over time in the process of evolution, is higher. This totally explains how the SARS-CoV-2-an avirulent virus, has been so far successful in propagating itself! Thus, natural selection is always at play and only the fittest individuals will survive in this struggle for existence and continue to live on through their progenies. References: The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins Survival Strategies by Raghavendra Gadagkar |
AuthorI am Shatarupa from India. I am passionate about science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. I am inherently a nature lover and enjoy writing about stories, articles pertaining to nature, science and life. Welcome to my website! |