Ch 14: Darwin and Evolution

• Evolution

  Genetic change over time.
• Natural Selection

  Common descent with modification
• Aristotle


  believed that species were fixed creations arranged by their complexity
• Linnaeus

  1st to group similar organisms and assign them Latin names
• Binomial nomenclature

  Two word name(genus species/specific epithet)
• Charles Lyell: Uniformitarianism 


  1.Geological processes occur at uniform rates; building and wearing down earth's crust

  2.Challenged the view that Earth was only 6,000 years old

  3.Piggy-backed on James Hutton's Gradualism
• George Cuvier: Catastrophism

  1. Found some species completely disappeared in more recent layers
  2. Stated that species disappear due to catastrophic event of the earth's crust
  3. Believed that new species appeared after a catastrophic event
• Thomas Malthus: Struggle For Existence


  1.Stated that when birth rates were higher than death rates we see overpopulation

  2. Population size increases, resources dwindle

  3. Stated that death rates would increase in response and create a balance
• Lamarck's Theory of Evolution


  1.Evolution occurs and that adaptation to the environment is the cause of diversity

  2. More complex are descended from less complex
• Theory of acquired characteristics


  The use and disuse of a structure can bring about inherited change
• The Galapagos Island


  The islands that lead to Darwin's theory of evolution
• Speciation


  The formation of new species
• The force that drives evolution is natural selection
• The steps that go into natural selection

  1. Overpopulation- A lot of offspring
  2. Variation- Heritable variation
  3. Selection- Favorable traits survive/reproduce
  4. Adaptation- Favorable traits get passed on
• Extinction


  The loss of a species
• Fitness


  is the reproductive success of an individual relative to other members of the population
• Artificial Selection


  Humans can contribute to the fitness of organisms
• Fossil Record


  Fossils trapped in rock strata that is used to date the past
• Transition Organism


  Transition between two different environment like water to land
• Vestigial Structures


  Structures that are/were fully developed in one group of organisms but reduced and nonfunctional in other similar groups

  EX(Wisdom teeth, Goosebumps, and Appendix)
• Homologous Structures


  A structure that is similar in different types of organism because these organisms are derived from a common ancestor

  EX(The forelimbs of vertebrates)
• Analogous Structures


  Structures that have a similar function in separate lineages but differ in anatomy and ancestry

  EX(bird and bat wings)