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The evolution of biological complexity is one important outcome of the process of evolution. [1] Evolution has produced some remarkably complex organisms – although the actual level of complexity is very hard to define or measure accurately in biology, with properties such as gene content, the number of cell types or morphology all proposed as possible metrics.
In biology, evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological organisms over generations due to natural selection, mutation, gene flow, and genetic drift. Also known as descent with modification .
Recent human evolution refers to evolutionary adaptation, sexual and natural selection, and genetic drift within Homo sapiens populations, since their separation and dispersal in the Middle Paleolithic about 50,000 years ago. Contrary to popular belief, not only are humans still evolving, their evolution since the dawn of agriculture is faster ...
The idea of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, but evolutionary biology, as an academic discipline in its own right, emerged during the period of the modern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. [8] It was not until the 1980s that many universities had departments of evolutionary biology.
In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology.
Sean B. Carroll (born September 17, 1960) is an American evolutionary developmental biologist, author, educator and executive producer.He is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and professor emeritus of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
It combines ecology, evolution, and genetics to understand the processes behind adaptation. [1] It is virtually synonymous with the field of molecular ecology. This contrasts with classical genetics, which works mostly on crosses between laboratory strains, and DNA sequence analysis, which studies genes at the molecular level.
Ecological, evolutionary, developmental biology compares these subgenres of biology. Interaction between organisms and the environment is very important. Climate change intensely alters these interactions and is cause for concern in regard to the overall well-being of our ecological landscape.