Some of you will have seen Starship Troopers, a movie based upon a novel by Robe

Question

Some of you will have seen Starship Troopers, a movie based upon a novel by Robert Heinlein. The film deviates from the book in some ways, for example the book describes a visit to a planet to resupply the dropships used in combat operations by the M.I. (mobile infantry). Heinlein describes this visit in the book; a portion of the novel is reproduced on the following page.

The followig passage contains two concepts we have discussed in class in relation to the effects of mutation on populations, one positive and one negative. Describe the two mutation related concepts Heinlein discusses. You must describe these concepts as a biologist - you must use the technical terms we have used in class properly and explain the positive and negative effect of mutation on the evolution and health of a population.

(a) What is the positive effect of mutation as described by Heinlein?

(I.E., what does Heinlein describe as a benefit of having more mutations)

(b) What is the negative effect of mutation as described by Heinlein?

(I.E., what does Heinlein describe as a problem of having more mutations)

  I never have learned the co-ordinates of Sanctuary, nor the name or catalogue number of the star it orbits - because what you don’t know, you can’t spill; the location is ultra-top-secret, known only to ship’s captains, piloting officers, and such ... and I understand, with each of them under orders and hypnotic compulsion to suicide if necessary to avoid capture. So I don’t want to know. With the possibility that Luna Base might be taken and Terra herself occupied, the Federation kept as much of its beef as possible as Sanctuary, so that a disaster back home would not necessarily mean capitulation.

    But I can tell you what sort of a planet it is. Like Earth, but retarded.

    Literally retarded, like a kid who takes ten years to learn to wave bye-bye and never does manage to master patty cake. It is a planet as near Earth as two planets can be, same age according to the planetologists and its star is the same age as the Sun and the same type, so say the astrophysicists. It has plenty of flora and fauna, the same atmosphere as Earth, near enough, and much the same weather; it even has a good-sized moon and Earth’s exceptional tides.

    With all these advantages it barely got away from the starting gate. You see, it’s short on mutations; it does not enjoy Earths high level of natural radiation.

    Its typical and most highly developed plant life is a very primitive giant fern; its top animal life is a proto-insect which hasn’t even developed colonies. I am not speaking of transplanted Terran flora and fauna - our stuff moves in and brushes the native stuff aside.

    With its evolutionary progress held down to almost to zero by lack of radiation and a consequent most unhealthily low mutation rate, native life forms of Sanctuary just haven’t had a decent chance to evolve and aren’t fit to compete. Their gene patterns remain fixed for a relatively long time; they aren’t adaptable - like being forced to play the same bridge hand over and over again, for eons, with no hope of getting a better one.

    As long as they just competed with each other, this didn’t matter too much - morons among morons, so to speak. But when types that had evolved on a planet enjoying high radiation and fierce competition were introduced, the native stuff was outclassed.

    Now all the above is perfectly obvious from high school biology ... but the high forehead from the research station there who was telling me about this brought up a point I would have never thought of.

    What about the human beings who have colonized Sanctuary?

    Not transients like me, but the colonists who live there, many of whom were born there, and whose descendants will live there, even unto the umpteenth generation - what about those descendants? It doesn’t do a person any harm not to be radiated; in fact it’s a bit safer - leukemia and some types of cancer are almost unknown there. Besides that, the economic situation is at present all in their favor; when they plant a field of (Terran) wheat;, they don’t even have to clear out the weeds. Terran wheat displaces anything native.

    But the descendants of those colonists won’t evolve. Not much, anyhow. This chap told me that they could improve a little through mutation from other causes, from new blood added by immigration, and from natural selection among the gene patterns they already own - but that is all very minor compared with the evolutionary rate on Terra and on any usual planet. So what happens? Do they stay frozen at their present levels while the rest of the human race moves on past them, until they are living fossils, as out of place as a pithecanthropus in a spaceship?

    Or will they worry about the fate of their descendants and dose themselves regularly with X-rays or maybe set of lots of dirty-type nuclear explosions each year to build up a fallout reservoir in their atmosphere? (Accepting, of course, the immediate dangers of radiation to themselves in order to provide a proper genetic heritage of mutation for the benefit of their descendants.)

    This bloke predicted that they would not do anything. He claims that the human is too individualistic, too self-centered, to worry that much about future generations. He says that the genetic impoverishment of distant generations through the lack of radiation is something most people are simply incapable of worrying about. And of course it is a far-distant threat; evolution works so slowly, even on Terra, that the development of a new species is a matter of many, many thousands of years.

    I don’t know. Shucks, I don’t know what I myself will do more than half the time; how can I predict what a colony of strangers will do? But I’m sure of this: Sanctuary is going to be fully settled, either by us or by the bugs. Or by somebody. It is a potential utopia, and, with desirable real estate so scarce in this end of the Galaxy, it will not be left in the possession of primitive life forms that failed to make the grade.

Explanation / Answer

The positive effects of mutation is that : Without mutation , the evolutionary progress was held down to zero by the lack of radiation.

There will be no chance of evolution , individuals are not fit to compete.

they are neither adaptable ---- they cant get better.

THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS ------- if there will be mutation ----- then persons will be harmed , here the situation is a bit safe , leukemia and other types of cancer are not found here

no dirty type nuclear explosions will be found here

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