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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 article was the first announcement of the Darwin–Wallace theory of evolution by natural selection; and appeared in print on 20 August 1858. The presentation of the papers spurred Darwin to write a condensed "abstract" of his "big book", Natural Selection.
Although neutral evolution remains the consensus theory among modern biologists, [3] and thus Kimura's resolution of Haldane's dilemma is widely regarded as correct, some biologists argue that adaptive evolution explains a large fraction of substitutions in protein coding sequence, [4] and they propose alternative solutions to Haldane's dilemma.
Neutral theory – Theory of evolution by changes at the molecular level; Shifting balance theory – One version of the theory of evolution; Price equation – Description of how a trait or gene changes in frequency over time; Coefficient of relationship – Measure of biological relationship between individuals
A competing evolutionary idea is the court jester hypothesis, which indicates that an arms race is not the driving force of evolution on a large scale, but rather it is abiotic factors. [35] [36] The Black Queen hypothesis is a theory of reductive evolution that suggests natural selection can drive organisms to reduce their genome size. [37]
The first is a historical study of classical evolutionary thought, drawing extensively upon primary documents; the second is a constructive critique of the modern synthesis, and presents a case for an interpretation of biological evolution based largely on hierarchical selection, and the theory of punctuated equilibrium (developed by Niles ...
Evolutionary suicide has also been referred to as Darwinian extinction, [2] evolution to extinction [3] and evolutionary collapse. [4] The idea is similar in concept to the tragedy of the commons and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall , namely that they are all examples of an accumulation of individual changes leading to a collective ...
Shifting balance theory aims to explain how this may be possible. The shifting balance theory is a theory of evolution proposed in 1932 by Sewall Wright , suggesting that adaptive evolution may proceed most quickly when a population divides into subpopulations with restricted gene flow .