give an example that shows why essentialism is not accurate in population biology?

Answer 1

Essentialism states that all the species are not changing through time, that all the species are fixed. This is obviously not true- we have evidence that species change and evolve over time, as can be seen in the fossil record, in such things as the domestication of corn (at first corn was super small, like the size of a finger, but domestication of it made corn bigger and bigger). another examples of change in a population would be resistance against pesticides and drugs. If you use pesticides or drugs, through times they become more and more ineffective against hte population of bugs or bacteria/virus you are dealing with. What happens is that some of the individuals have genes with resistance to the chemicals, and they survive, thus changing the population in the following generation, where more members of the population will be resistant to the pesticide/drug.

Answer 2

Before evolution was developed as a viable scientific theory, there existed an essentialist view of biology that posited all species to be unchanging throughout time. Some religious opponents of evolution continue to maintain this view of biology.