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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]
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 modern evolutionary synthesis is the outcome of a merger of several different scientific fields to produce a more cohesive understanding of evolutionary theory. In the 1920s, Ronald Fisher , J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright combined Darwin's theory of natural selection with statistical models of Mendelian genetics , founding the discipline ...
Darwin's finches. Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth.
Charles Darwin, whose On the Origin of Species introduced the theory of evolution to society at large, photographed in 1881. Evolutionism is a term used (often derogatorily) to denote the theory of evolution. Its exact meaning has changed over time as the study of evolution has progressed.
Level of support for evolution – Variation in support for the theory of evolution; Objections to evolution – Arguments that have been made against evolution; Social effects of evolutionary theory – Effects on human societies of the scientific explanation of life's diversity; Theology of creationism and evolution – Topic in theology
A large part of evolutionary ecology is about utilising models and finding empirical data as proof. [1] Examples include the Lack clutch size model devised by David Lack and his study of Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands. Lack's study of Darwin's finches was important in analyzing the role of different ecological factors in speciation.
William S. Cooper, in his 2001 book The Evolution of Reason: Logic as a Branch of Biology, illustrates how logical rules are derived directly from evolutionary principles. [14] Evolution as computation is a concept explored by John Mayfield in his 2013 book The Engine of Complexity: Evolution as Computation. He synthesizes core concepts from ...