BIO 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon, James Hutton, Thomas Robert Malthus
Document Summary
Chapter 18: evolution and the origin of species. Charles darwin and natural selection: charles darwin and alfred russel wallace independently discovered the actual mechanism of evolution, while on the galapagos islands, darwin observed similar species on different islands with distinct differences. This will lead to a change in populations over generations, which darwin ter(cid:373)ed (cid:862)des(cid:272)e(cid:374)t (cid:449)ith (cid:373)odifi(cid:272)atio(cid:374). (cid:863: natural selection leads to greater adaptation of the population to its local environment. It is the only mechanism for adaptive evolution: darwin published his findings in his book, on the origin of species. In vernacular, it refers to something unproven: individuals evolve, evolution is the change in genetic composition of a population over time. Individuals do not change their genetic makeup in their lifetime: evolution explains the origin of life, the theory explains how populations change over time, not how these populations began, organisms evolve on purpose, individual organisms do not evolve.
