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Biodiversity is most commonly used to replace the more clearly-defined and long-established terms, species diversity and species richness. [13] However, there is no concrete definition for biodiversity, as its definition continues to be defined. Other definitions include (in chronological order):
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 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. [6]
The result of four billion years of evolution is the diversity of life around us, with an estimated 1.75 million different species in existence today. [ 71 ] [ 72 ] Usually the process of speciation is slow, occurring over very long time spans; thus direct observations within human life-spans are rare.
The main subfields of evolutionary ecology are life history evolution, sociobiology (the evolution of social behavior), the evolution of interspecific interactions (e.g. cooperation, predator–prey interactions, parasitism, mutualism) and the evolution of biodiversity and of ecological communities.
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.
The origins and history of ecosystems, species, genes and genomes, and organisms, and how these have changed over time is all part of the studies of how biodiversity has evolved and how it takes place. Ecology and Evolutionary biology in North America is based on research impact determined by the top 10% of ecology programs.
The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor, conceptual model, and research tool used to explore the evolution of life and describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). [1]