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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]
The evidence on which scientific accounts of human evolution are based comes from many fields of natural science. The main source of knowledge about the evolutionary process has traditionally been the fossil record, but since the development of genetics beginning in the 1970s, DNA analysis has come to occupy a place of comparable importance.
Cave paintings (such as this one from France) represent a benchmark in the evolutionary history of human cognition. Victorian naturalist Charles Darwin was the first to propose the out-of-Africa hypothesis for the peopling of the world, [40] but the story of prehistoric human migration is now understood to be much more complex thanks to twenty-first-century advances in genomic sequencing.
The evolution of eukaryotes, and possibly sex, is thought to be related to the GOE, as it probably pressured two or three lineages of prokaryotes (including an aerobe one, which later became mitochondria) to depend on each other, leading to endosymbiosis. Early eukaryotes lost their cell walls and outer membranes.
The basic mechanisms of evolution are applied directly or indirectly to come up with novel designs or solve problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. The research generated in these applied fields, contribute towards progress, especially from work on evolution in computer science and engineering fields such as mechanical engineering. [5]
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
Building on what has come before, the opening act of Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber’s “Evolution” recalls a monologue from the Hungarian duo’s previous film, “Pieces of a Woman ...
Competition is modelled by r/K selection theory, which is based on Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson's work on island biogeography. [70] In this theory, selective pressures drive evolution in one of two stereotyped directions: r- or K-selection. [71] These terms, r and K, can be illustrated in a logistic model of population dynamics: [72]