BIOL 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Canis
Document Summary
The basic idea of biological evolution is that populations and species of organisms change over time. In the 1850s, darwin wrote on the origin of species, which was an influential (and controversial) book exploring the concept of evolution. In his book, darwin proposed that species evolve (undergo descent with modification ) and that all living things can trace their descent to a common ancestor. A species is a group of similar organisms that can interbreed with each other to make healthy, fertile offspring. Examples of species include homo sapiens (humans) and canis familiaris (domestic dogs) Darwin suggested a mechanism for evolution mechanism for evolution called natural selection, in which heritable traits that help organisms survive and reproduce become more common in a population over time. A heritable trait is one that is passed on from parents to children by way of genes.