My take on: Charles Darwin's theories and potential applications

Not all of us are lucky enough to be enrolled in Ecology 200 for a small portion of our lives. As one of the lucky ones, I thought I'd share a few of the more interesting aspects of Charles Darwin's observations about various animal species with all those unlucky students who are missing out.

First: the predator-prey dynamic. We're all familiar with this to a certain extent, but only we ecology students know that situations involving a predator and its prey are complicated by resource variability. Resources are rarely at ideal quantities within a given environment and are usually at either overly abundant or limited quantities.

A scenario occurring between a wolf and a rabbit, for example, therefore takes place in one of two basic ways: 1) overabundance — the wolf is chasing the rabbit, sees a fox, changes its mind and goes for the better/more appealing prey (despite the higher difficulty levels of obtaining the second instead of the first option) and the rabbit escapes, having presumably employed various defense mechanisms for stalling the wolf until this point; 2) limitation — the wolf is aware of an overall shortage of food and sticks with the rabbit for as long as it takes to catch it (be it minutes, hours, days — whatever); defense tactics employed by the rabbit are in vain and the wolf will not stop the chase until he is fed.

The pattern? The predator sticks with its scarcer, more valuable prey. It is the survival duty of the prey to stall the predator for as long as physically possible, but if that prey is truly the most desirable, it will be caught. Time and energy are second to the predator's fulfillment of its own survival, and thus it won't give up the chase at any cost in either realm. Together, the difficulty level and duration length of a chase indicate the desirability of a particular prey to its predator. The expenditure of both time and energy by the predator indicate its fitness level and justify its ability to succeed in its pursuit.

Second: the mating dynamic. This is something I won't assume everyone knows, because I certainly didn't: Females are always the rarer resource. The propagation of genes relies on fertilization (sperm) upon the fertilizable (egg), and the former is infinitely abundant in every individual male while the latter is limited within every individual female (necessarily making the ratio of sperm and eggs to be infinity: to non-infinity, regardless of population size). Reproduction rates are as vital to a species' propagation as survival rates, and thus, mating procedures are as important as those designed for feeding.

The predator-prey dynamic is, then, comparable to that of mating. The treatment of limited resources can be viewed as parallel — scarce resources can only be obtained by the fittest members of a species, and this fitness is shown through an expenditure of both time and energy in resource attainment. Like the vast amount of time and energy a predator is willing to put into catching its prey, the time and energy an organism of a species possessing the more abundant sexual function puts in to catching a potential mate will be virtually inexhaustible.

What does this mean? Among a functional species, only the fittest members will survive, i.e. stay alive and reproduce. Unfit predators will not catch their prey, and unfit mates will not reproduce. The same way that a prey will employ escape tactics upon its predator, a member of the scarcer sex must test its potential mate; in both cases, a fit member of the species will prove its ability to achieve its goal. If fitness does not need to be a factor in either one of these processes, the species in question is essentially doomed (because in the words of Darwin, "The weak members of [such environments then] propagate their kind").

So what? Well, this is the part I hope you can devolve. Suppose our campus is a specific environment (it is), and that the processes involved with both survival and reproduction are our utmost priorities (they are — even if reproduction is not necessarily the outcome). Suppose the attainment of money as a resource has taken the place of the attainment of moving prey in the race among the members of the species for survival (it has); a huge expenditure of time and energy in that particular realm is easily observed within this environment.

Suppose, again, that females are the rarer resource in the race for reproduction (they are), and that it is always a goal of the species to reproduce (it is); do you see the same expenditure of time and energy in that attainment of resources that you may see in the former? But the skyrocketing success rates associated with mating in this environment imply an unfortunate propagation of the weak and undesirable genes associated with unfit mates nonetheless.

Where effort is demanded, effort will occur. The blue-footed boobie is a perfect example: A male member of this species, wishing to attract a particular mate, will build itself a display out of rocks and stand upon this display, maximizing its vocal capacity in a call to its potential mate. The mate will never respond to a first or even second attempt. In fact, potential mates will refuse to respond to this display even when the calling bird attracts predators (only momentarily stopping the process). The bird giving the mating call will take all sorts of risks in an effort to attract a potential mate, which it eventually (and only eventually) does.

How ridiculous is that? But we love it. We've seen similar displays in movies, but I don't think we really believe them to be true (Heath Ledger singing in "10 Things I Hate About You," Ryan Gosling on the Ferris wheel and building the house in "The Notebook," John Travolta at the end of "Grease," and so on).

We like these displays because they show fitness, believe it or not — and they are real, even probable (or natural!), if they become necessary for the attainment of limited resources. For the sake of our species, it is our duty to demand displays of effort from an organism before allowing it to propagate its genes. Darwin evidences the success of this duty, and I just straight-up guarantee it.

We are all scarce. We are all desirable. We are all foxes. Women of the University of Richmond, for evolution's sake, please stop hopping around. All of us can run.