MB446: MODULE 2 - EVOLUTION

• Predominant world view throughout the Middle Ages was stasis, the idea that the world was fixed and unchanging. Also called Fixity of Species.
• proposed that catastrophic geologic forces unlike those of the present-day shaped Earth’s surface

  Georges Cuvier
• Proposed that changes in an animal over its lifetime were inherited

  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
• Change in a line of descent. Occurs via changes in DNA sequences (mutations) that code for traits over several generations

  Evolution
• Charles Lyell's Book

  Principles of Geology
• Extinct giant armored Glyptodont is similar to and lived in the same area as the Armadillo
• proposed that rocks form very slowly and are changed by forces that twist, lift and fold them

  James Hutton
• He believed that the geological processes we see today must be the same ones that shaped Earth millions of years ago

  Charles Lyell
• Lamarck's Evolutionary Hypothesis: Living organisms and their component parts tend to increase continually in size.

  Internal Vital Force
• Lamarck's Evolutionary Hypothesis: If an organ is used constantly, it tends to become enlarged, whereas lack of use results in degeneration

  Use and Disuse of Organs
• Lamarck's Evolutionary Hypothesis: Production of a new organ results from a new need and from the new movements which this need starts and maintains.

  Effect of Environment and New Needs:
• Lamarck's Evolutionary Hypothesis: Modification produced by the above principles during the lifetime of an individual will be inherited by its offspring, with the result that changes are cumulative over a period of time.

  Inheritance of Acquired Characters:
• He noticed that people were being born faster than people were dying

  Thomas Malthus
• He reasoned that if the human population grew unchecked, there would not be enough living space and food for everyone

  Thomas Malthus
• In _______, nature provides the variations, and humans select the ones they find useful

  Artificial Selection
• The degree of adaptation to an environment, as measured by an individual’s relative genetic contribution to future generations

  Fitness
• Any heritable characteristic that increases an organisms ability to survive and reproduce in its environment

  Adaptation
• Differential survival and reproduction of individuals of a population that vary in the details of shared, heritable traits

  Natural Selection
• “father of biogeography"

  Alfred Wallace
• proposed the theory of natural selection in 1858

  Alfred Wallace
• Darwin published _________the following year, in which he described descent with modification, or evolution

  On the Origin of Species
• Natural selection produces organisms with different structures than their ancestor, different niches, and new habitats.

  Each living species has descended, with changes, over time.

  Common Descent
• Crater that was created by asteroid in Arizona 50,000 years ago

  Barringer Crater
• Simultaneous loss of many lineages from Earth

  Mass extinction
• Study of patterns in the geographic distribution of species and communities

  Biogeography
• Scientific study of anatomical patterns in body plans

  Comparative morphology
• Unique layer of rock that formed 65.5 million years ago

  K-T Boundary Layer
• Name of ship that Charles Darwin rode

  HMS Beagle
• Name of island where finches were studies

  Daphne Major
• Finch with fine needle-like beak used for picking insects

  Warbler Finch
• Finch with robust beak concentrated on beetle and termite larvae

  Woodpecker finch
• Finch with longer sharp-pointed beak that probes into a cactus flower

  Cactus Finch