lecture 2

• Early attempts at evolutionary theory in the non-Western world include ancient Greece, Arabia, India, China, and indigenous teachings.
• Geographic variation between organisms is a concept in evolutionary theory.
• Adaptation to local environments is a concept in evolutionary theory.
• Struggle for existence between the organism and its environment is a concept in evolutionary theory.
• Al-Jahiz describes the concepts and mechanisms of biological evolution before Darwin.
• Al-Haytham is known for his scientific method and discovering the laws of reflection and reflect refraction of light.
• Charles Darwin is considered the father of Evolutionary theory and his work reflects how the colonial dominance of Western Europe in science and exploration around the world.
• Religion and the Divine Creator are concepts in evolutionary theory.
• Fixity of Species is a concept in evolutionary theory where species are perfectly adapted to their surroundings and do not need to change.
• Scala Naturae, a hierarchical system of classification, was established by Aristotle in the 4th century BC and didn't include religious elements.
• The Great Chain of Being, a grouping system based on physical similarities, was prevalent in Western Europe.
• Carolus Linnaeus, the father of Taxonomy, is famous for organizing the natural world during his time.
• John Ray, the father of Natural History, left Western Europe to understand GOD and GOD's creations.
• Galileo in the 1600s confirmed Copernicus' theory that the universe is full of motion and promoted the idea that the universe is a system of motion.
• Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, discussed similarities between man and apes and the common ancestry of humans and apes.
• 17th-century discoveries and inventions included the laws of physics, anatomical sciences, scientific instruments, and natural history.
• Charles Lyell, the father of Geology, is known for his theory of Uniformitarianism, which states that geological processes that occurred in the past also occur in the present and have shaped the Earth’s landscapes.
• Nicholas Steno, the father of Stratigraphy, studied medicine and deep time, fossils, and environmental change.
• Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, the first to attempt the process of evolution, coined the term biology and invertebrate.
• Georges Curvier, the father of Vertebrate Paleontology, studied the mummified cats.
• James Ussher, in 1561 –1656, stated that the Earth was created on the night preceding the twenty-third day of October 4004 BC.
• Fossils at the time meant organisms had succumbed to a biblical flood.
• Extinction was not a concept in evolutionary theory at the time.
• Evolution requires time.
• The Scientific Revolution in the 15th century led to the observation of biodiversity outside of Western Europe, the realisation that the Earth is not flat, and Copernicus arguing that the Earth is not the centre of the universe.
• Darwinian evolution: Heritable traits, variation within a population is a must for natural selection, fitness is a relative that changes in different environmental conditions, evolution takes time, and extinction is a part of the process.
• Natural selection and descent with modification: Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1914) developed the concept of natural selection.
• Fundamentals of natural selection: Species can produce offspring at a faster rate than food supplies increase, there is biological variation within all species, in each generation, more individuals are produced than can survive, individuals who possess favourable traits or variations are more likely to survive and produce offspring, environmental context determines whether a trait is beneficial, traits are inherited and passed on to the next generation, and variations accumulate over long periods, so later generations may be distinct from ancestral ones.
• Natural selection can be observed in the case of peppered moths in England in the 1950s.
• Struggle for survival: Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) stated that competition for resources increases population size exponentially while resources increase arithmetically.
• A trait must be inherited if natural selection is to act on it, natural selection cannot occur without population variation in inherited characteristics, fitness is a relative measure that changes as the environment changes, natural selection can only act on traits that affect reproduction, reproductive success is the number of offspring an individual produces and rears to reproductive age, and selective pressures are forces in the environment that influence reproductive success in individuals.
• The ideas for Darwin and Wallace’s theory of evolution were put in motion by so many natural historians coming before them.
• Early views of the Earth (including its age), the organization of species, ideas about fossils and extinction before the 1700s were different from those held later.
• As populations respond to pressures over time, they may become distinct species, descended from a common ancestor.
• Lamarck vs Darwin/Wallace: The Darwin/Wallace theory of natural selection states that there is variation in neck length among giraffes.
• Darwin observed finches and tortoises in the Galapagos island, where species were found in multiple localities and differed from place to place.
• The journey of natural selection involves extant species, those that are surviving and still existing.
• Artificial selection is the identification by humans of desirable traits in plants and animals, and the subsequent steps taken to enhance and perpetuate those traits in future generations.
• August Weismann’s The Germ-Plasms: A Theory of Heredity predicted that an offspring inherits half of its germ-plasm from each of its parents, and claimed that other cells (e.g., somatic, or body, cells) could not transmit genetic information from parents to offspring.
• The significant contributions of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck include his theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics, which was right about the environment influencing characteristics of species, and variations being passed on through reproduction but the mechanism was wrong.