Climate Change – What Will Happen to Our Planet?

The physical appearance and characteristics of animals may change and genetic variation could be reduced due to all of the effects that increasing temperatures can have. This is due to desired phenotype characteristics being present because of genotypes which may make it more able in the changed environment. Those without the genotype produced by the inherited alleles will therefore not have the phenotype which would have given the organism the desired characteristic and so will be less likely to survive in order to reproduce and pass on its own alleles. Reducing the number of organisms carrying the undesirable alleles by natural selection allows the remaining populations to survive with less competition increasing the number of well-adapted individuals in the environment. The reduction in population the gene pools also decrease and may cause an increase in genetic diseases arising with the reduction in variations of alleles. Mutations could also arrive to produce new DNA coding making new genotypes and if these are functional, they could produce new phenotypes which can produce characteristics either less or more adapted to the changes in the environment. This could contribute to faster production of new species with new phenotypes that make them better-adapted and therefore a more rapid evolution may occur coinciding with Darwin’s theory. Some species which move in may already have adaptations to the environment and so do not need to carry out natural selection at all there although the species already existing there may die out if they have no desired characteristics causing disturbances in the food web.