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The frontispiece to Erasmus Darwin's evolution -themed poem The Temple of Nature shows a goddess pulling back the veil from nature (in the person of Artemis). Allegory and metaphor have often played an important role in the history of biology. Part of a series on Biology Index Outline Glossary History (timeline) Key components Cell theory Ecosystem Evolution Phylogeny Properties of life ...
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
1802 – The term biology in its modern sense was propounded independently by Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (Biologie oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur) and Lamarck (Hydrogéologie). The word was coined in 1800 by Karl Friedrich Burdach. 1809 – Lamarck proposed a modern theory of evolution based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
In 1801, he published Système des animaux sans vertèbres, a major work on the classification of invertebrates, a term which he coined. [6] In an 1802 publication, he became one of the first to use the term "biology" in its modern sense. [7] [Note 1] Lamarck continued his work as a premier authority on invertebrate zoology.
In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization , from kingdoms to species , and individual organisms and molecules , such as DNA and proteins .
Biologists can study life at multiple levels of organization, [1] from the molecular biology of a cell to the anatomy and physiology of plants and animals, and the evolution of populations. [ 1 ] [ 6 ] Hence, there are multiple subdisciplines within biology , each defined by the nature of their research questions and the tools that they use.
The term phylogeny for the evolutionary relationships of species through time was coined by Ernst Haeckel, who went further than Darwin in proposing phylogenic histories of life. In contemporary usage, tree of life refers to the compilation of comprehensive phylogenetic databases rooted at the last universal common ancestor of life on Earth .
Julian Huxley coined the term in his 1942 book, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. The synthesis combined the ideas of natural selection, Mendelian genetics, and population genetics. It also related the broad-scale macroevolution seen by palaeontologists to the small-scale microevolution of local populations.