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Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life forms on Earth.
This glossary of genetics and evolutionary biology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the study of genetics and evolutionary biology, as well as sub-disciplines and related fields, with an emphasis on classical genetics, quantitative genetics, population biology, phylogenetics, speciation, and systematics.
Genetic hitchhiking – Phenomenon in biology; Negative selection (natural selection) – Selective removal of alleles that are deleterious; Related topics Microevolution – Change in allele frequencies that occurs over time within a population; Evolutionary game theory – Application of game theory to evolving populations in biology
It is common in both terrestrial and marine animals. Camouflage can be achieved in many different ways, such as through resemblance to surroundings, disruptive coloration, shadow elimination by countershading or counter-illumination, self-decoration, cryptic behavior, or changeable skin patterns and colour.
Biological constraints are factors which make populations resistant to evolutionary change. One proposed definition of constraint is "A property of a trait that, although possibly adaptive in the environment in which it originally evolved, acts to place limits on the production of new phenotypic variants."
The neutral theory of molecular evolution holds that most evolutionary changes occur at the molecular level, and most of the variation within and between species are due to random genetic drift of mutant alleles that are selectively neutral.
Stabilizing selection causes the narrowing of the phenotypes seen in a population. This is because the extreme phenotypes are selected against, causing reduced survival in organisms with those traits.