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Also called functionalism. The Darwinian view that many or most physiological and behavioral traits of organisms are adaptations that have evolved for specific functions or for specific reasons (as opposed to being byproducts of the evolution of other traits, consequences of biological constraints, or the result of random variation). adaptive radiation The simultaneous or near-simultaneous ...
Convergent evolution—the repeated evolution of similar traits in multiple lineages which all ancestrally lack the trait—is rife in nature, as illustrated by the examples below. The ultimate cause of convergence is usually a similar evolutionary biome , as similar environments will select for similar traits in any species occupying the same ...
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 .
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.
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]
macroevolution – macromutation – The Major Transitions in Evolution – maladaptation – The Malay Archipelago – mass extinctions – mating systems – John Maynard Smith – Ernst Mayr – Gregor Mendel – memetics – Mendelian inheritance – Mesozoic–Cenozoic radiation – microevolution – micropaleontology (a.k.a. micropaleobiology) – Miller–Urey experiment – mimicry ...
The peppered moth, Biston betularia, is justly famous as an example of a population responding in a heritable way to a significant change in their ecological circumstances. E.B. Ford described peppered moth evolution as "one of the most striking, though not the most profound, evolutionary changes ever actually witnessed in nature". [63]
In biology, evolution is the process of change in all forms of life over generations, and evolutionary biology is the study of how evolution occurs. Biological populations evolve through genetic changes that correspond to changes in the organisms ' observable traits .