When does adaptation become evolution?

Question

So I believe in the Theory of Evolution. A few co-workers and I were talking about the subject and came to a new question (new to us and our discussion anyways); when does adaptation stop being adaptation and start being evolution? I would like to think that adaptation is not genetically transferred from one generation to the next where as evolution is. Through natural selection or some mutation we evolve, right? What do you think?

Answer 1

Evolution IS adaptation on a grand scale.

We can speak of immediate adaptation of an organism ... e.g., if you go from indoors to outdoors, your eyes adapt to the light.

But we can also speak of long-term adaptation of a species to its environment ... e.g. if it gradually gets colder, then the species on the whole may get hairier through natural selection. That IS evolution ... slow change over time.

Some creationists like to draw an arbitrary line at speciation. I.e., they concede that a species will adapt over time to changes in its environment (what they call microevolution); but deny that this can ever result in a new species (what they call macroevolution). They fail to understand that there is no fundamental difference between the two. If a single population of a species can undergo adaptations to environmental pressures ... then two isolated populations of a species, each encountering different environmental pressures, will undergo different adaptations. OR they could both encounter similar environments, but have different mutational events that produce different adaptations to the same type of environment. Either way, the adaptations in different directions eventually make them significantly different in form and genome, and they will lose first the desire, and then the ability to interbreed.

So enough adaptations compounded on top of each other, will lead to speciation.

So adaptation IS evolution.

Answer 2

With all due respect, I think you are way off base.

First, evolution is always occurring, it is an effect and not a driving force or cause.

Second: Adaptations do not "become" evolution. All species have adaptations which effect their chance of survival.

Third: Adaptations ARE transferred to future generations if the adaptation gives the species a survival advantage. Evolution is a cumulative effect of genetic adaptations.

Answer 3

I think evolution has to be a change in the genes, but adaptation can be either a change in the genes or a behavioral change.