TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO:

The terms mutate and evolve are sometimes used interchangeably when people talk about biological change over time.
But mutation and evolution are two completely distinct processes. Mutations happen in single cells.
Most mutations only persist for a short time, as a tumor or growth arising from a single cell in a single individual.
Mutations only persist long-term if that cell is a gamete that forms a new individual.
We call the offspring that inherits a new mutation "a mutant", but it may be the start of something bigger.
The word evolution is used to describe the long-term changes in a population of many individuals, over the long-term.
Mutations are important because they're where new alleles or loci come from, but they always start in just one cell and one mutant.
Mutation doesn't drive evolution, it just provides the new ocassional new gene that may, or may not, go on to evolve.
Most importantly, individuals don't mutate together in parallel. Mutations are random, rare, and mostly unique
New mutations only become common via the generations of survival and reproduction in the descendants of that first mutant.
Our thinking is highly influenced by the words we use, and using the wrong words makes us think incorrectly.
If we use the term "mutate" when describing evolution, we may incorrectly think that a bunch of parallel mutations happened.
But that's not how mutation and evolution work. Mutation fuels evolution, but it isn't evolution.
Individuals may mutate, but populations evolve.