Thinning a Species
In The Hot Zone, the conversation between Johnson and Preston entail the Ebola virus and a surprisingly beneficial that could come out of its infection of the human race. Johnson touches on the fact that the virus would do humans a favor by thinning us out drastically, which seems like a very negative effect at first. It can be inferred that Johnson is talking about Darwin's theory of Natural Selection, otherwise interpreted as the common phrase "survival of the fittest". The weakest organisms that don't survive the epidemic won't be around to pass on traits to the next generation or contribute alleles to the common gene pool. The organisms that do survive would pass on offspring through traits favored by nature. Over time, the population of organisms would become more versatile, stronger, and more likely to survive such events. In the case of Ebola, the surviving percent of humans would create pass on favorable survival traits to a stronger new generation.
Standard: organisms, populations, and communities in response to external change
One of the main characteristics of any living organism is the ability and desire to thrive in its environment while maintaining homeostasis. External factors will certainly change how living things respond to the environment and adapt in order to survive. For example, a natural disaster or sudden change in climate or the availability of resources will test the adaptability of many organisms. In the event of a forest fire wiping out all of the plant food sources for herbivores, such animals would have to quickly develop a way to react and continue maintaining homeostasis. Single organisms would have to compete to survive, and only the favorable will succeed in doing so. If the deer in the forest were outrunning a quickly spreading flame or seeking new food sources, only the fastest and most clever individuals would be able to reproduce. Over time, these adaptions cause fluctuations of alleles in the gene pool of a population, giving rise to evolution. This process is the way a population as a whole responds to changing surroundings. In communities, evolution allows organisms to progress, reproduce, and continue a cycle of interaction among organisms. With changes in the sizes of different populations in a community, all of the populations within the community are affected as a result. In relation to Johnson's remark on the benefit of the ravaging Ebola virus, he suggests that most of the human population would be eliminated. This is because Ebola is so easily tractable and so difficult for organisms to fend off, making it much less possible to maintain homeostasis, much less thrive. After the outbreak, however, the remaining population would be much stronger against such viruses in the future, bettering the chance of thriving in response to an external factor.