ANT 160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Genetic Drift, Natural Selection, Mutation

• School: University of Kentucky
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: ANT 160
• Professor: Renee Bonzani

Document Summary

Wallace: charles darwin published "the origins of species" in 1859, darwin and wallace recognized the heritable variation as characteristics passed on by the parents. Only when genetics was developed was it possible to understand this: darwin and wallace"s evolutionary processes, every species on this planet arose through the same process, this process defines why a species looks and behaves a certain way. This process affects their morphology, physiology, and behavior: humans are subject to the same evolutionary processes, postulates, the ability of a population to expand infinitely, while the resources available to sustain the population are finite (carrying capacity). Thus traits that confer advantage in survival and reproduction are retained in the population, and traits that are disadvantageous disappear. Natural selection preserves the status quo when the most common type is the best adapted.