Measuring Fitness: getting a low rating from Charles

deep down. deep down inside, i'm hoping that someone, somewhere will consider me a scientist. i've studied in the desert. i've studied by the ocean. i've seen a whale leap from the sea and i've watched as a fertilized egg divides. i hope that someone, someday will see inside of me and say, "Biologist".

the unifying theme of biology is evolution. from single celled organisms on up to the complex behaviours of social animals, all find a home on the same evolutionary tree. this interconnectedness of the biological world was elucidated by Charles Darwin in his publication of The Origin of Species (1859). The complete title of Darwin's work was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. if anyone is going to call me a biologist, i better know something about biology's central theory. i'm still studying.

there i was, in my graduate course on population ecology; a class focused on the way a population's numbers can rise and fall. the professor points to a 30 year old Ph.D. student who has five kids, and we discuss the reproductive potential of a population following that model of reproduction. then i started to feel bad.

natural selection measures the fitness of individuals. fitness is not how fast that individual can run, or how much food it can acquire (although these may be components of fitness). fitness, in the end, is how many offspring you produce that go on to produce offspring of their own. a hopelessness started to settle in.

a well-reasoning person wouldn't hire an accountant who's filing for personal bankruptcy to manage their assets. common sense would make you question the quality of an obese nutritionist. each person should know the common language of their field. if i were i biologist, i'd understand evolution and in turn i'd understand natural selection and at least something about fitness.

i am a 32 year-old with no children of my own, sitting next to a 30 year old with five. somehow, even with all of this studying, i have overlooked the idea of my personal fitness. one professor has called my attention, essentially placing my own self on the scale to weigh in on the field of biology, and has found me lacking.

Charles thinks i'm a joke.