2. Short term- Sweating
Your bodies way in trying to cool down
Facultative: Low Blood Pressure
Your blood vessels dilate and can cause lowering of BP
Developmental: Extra Melanin
Humans in areas with excess heat develop skin with extra melanin for protection from the UV rays
Cultural: Less Clothing
Outside temperatures rise, clothing becomes minimal for the body to stay cool
3. Human Variation along clines is beneficial to know because it allows you to really understand the different aspects that can really play the part in environmental stresses and how they affect our homeostasis. This information is useful to know because it can really help establish better ways to help people during summer, like for example knowing the facultative adaptation is great, and it also is beneficial to know because you are understanding why certain areas around the world are how they are, whether it is their skin, clothing, or health status.
4. Using the environmental adaptations to understand human variation because it is seeing the human as whole, everyone is the same body wise, so you are looking at the adaptations and seeing why humans react the way they do. By looking at it from a race standpoint, you would be missing certain key aspects, and not everyone of the same race would maybe not react the same.
Okay on your opening description of heat stress, but why does it have this impact on us? Why can't our body function well over that optimum temperature of 98.6 degrees? What happens to our body organs when the body temperature starts to rise?
ReplyDeleteYes, sweating is a short-term adaptation, but how does it work?
Our blood pressure might drop a bit via vasodilation, but not significantly, and it isn't the drop in blood pressure that helps us deal with heat... it's the vasodilation itself that is the adaptation. How does vasodilation help with heat stress?
Higher melanin levels are adaptive to solar radition, not to heat stress. An example of a developmental adaptation to heat stress is a long, lean body shape, as explained by Bergmann & Allen's rules. Make sure you check that out in the assignment module.
Good cultural adaptation.
"...for example knowing the facultative adaptation is great..."
How does knowing the facultative adaptation of vasodilation help you deal with heat stress? Does that understanding make my body deal more efficiently with heat? Only cultural adaptations can be adopted, not biological. So the question remains, how can this information be useful? Can knowledge on adaptations to hot climates have medical implications? Help us develop clothing that dissipate heat more efficiently? Can we develop new means of home/building construction that might help decrease heat retention? How can we actually use this information in an applied fashion?
I don't disagree with your points in the final section, but it misses a key point: Is it possible to use race to understand human variation? Recognize that it is okay to answer this question with "no".
To answer this question, you first need to explore what race actually is. Race is not based in biology but is a social construct, based in beliefs and preconceptions, and used only to categorize humans into groups based upon external physical features, much like organizing a box of crayons by color. Race does not *cause* adaptations like environmental stress do, and without that causal relationship, you can't use race to explain adaptations. Race has no explanatory value over human variation.
Great job on your post, the pictures you used were helpful and funny! Yet on #4 I feel that you should explain why race isn't used in science anymore, but yes is it good that you pointed out that you would be missing information if science was seen through race.
ReplyDelete-Adriana Chaparro
Hi Alicia,
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you in that I don't think that adaptations have anything to do with race. The human bodies are all the same and the only difference is the adaptations that different people get because of where they live. The type of environment that they live in can change a humans personal appearance in order to adapt to that environment. It has nothing to do with race.
Hi Alicia,
ReplyDeleteI think you explained the different adaptations that you listed very well, and liked how you used the pictures to drive your points home. I know that in modern times, race is not an effective way to track and analyze adaptations because our race no longer dictates where or how we live, like it did 1000 years ago. Do you think it would be a useful strategy if the human population was not as mobile as it currently is? If there was no cultural mingling?