Midterm

• In the 1500s Copernicus suggested that the Earth revolved around the sun.
• In the early 1600s, Galileo suggested that the Earth revolved around the sun, and published this theory along with additional mathematical calculations and observations to support his claim.
• Galileo was in house arrest most of his life because of his idea of how the earth revolved around the sun. The Catholic Church was not happy with him.
• Carolus Linneaus - Father of taxonomy, he created the binomial system of naming organisms.
• Towards the 1700's, Galileo's ideas were more accepted. We also see Newton's laws of physics and Linneaus come into play. At this point, the church couldn't really deny it. This was known as the "scientific revolution".
• Caroli Linnaei wrote a book - Systema Natvrae - trying to classify the natural world.
• Linnean System: 


  A classification system that was developed by Carl Linnaeus. It is a two-name naming system (binomial nomenclature).
• List the order of the Linnaean classification system:

  Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
• King Phillip Came Over For Good Stew = Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species
• In the Linnean system, all families end in dae.
• The heirarchical set-up of Linnean system highlighted the hierarchical nature of the natural world and hinted at common ancestry among closely related species.
• Linnaeus' placement of H. sapiens in a classification system with other animals was controversial at the time.
• Linnaeus' system demonstrated a belief that humans were not so far removed from the rest of the natural world.
• Buffon came about in the 1700s. He was the father of biogeography and a big time naturalist. His biggest contribution was the idea that geographical regions had slightly different looking plants and animals, despite similar habitats.
• Buffon posed that the environment could change species, but not create new species. He had the idea that species are not completely static; they may change and the environment may drive that change.
• Erasmus Darwin came about in the 1700's - he is the Darwin we know's Grandpa.
• Eramus Darwin also proposed the idea that species could change over time - and maybe even split with this change - due to environmental changes.
• Erasmus Darwin had the idea that living species descended from common ancestors. So the idea of evolution existed before C. Darwin, but no mechanism to explain how it worked
• In the early 1800s, Lamarck proposed that the way evolution worked was the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This is known as the Theory of Use or Disuse and provided a mechanism for evolution.
• Lamarck believed that traits acquired by an animal during its lifetime can be passed on to its offspring.
• We now know that genetics do not work as Lamarck imagined, but his theory was accepted by many for a number of years. You can't inherit acquired characters from your parents.
• What is Cuvier's Catastrophism?

  Series of creations and mass extinctions, the last being Noah's flood.
• Who was Cuvier?

  He was a paleontologist and Lamarck's main antagonist. His idea of catastrophism led him to believe that things weren't related.
• What is uniformitarianism?

  The principle that geological processes occurring today are the same as those that have occurred throughout Earth's history. Small changes + lots of time = bigger changes
• Charles Lyell was a geologist who proposed the theory of uniformitarianism.
• Charles Darwin: He was the first to propose the theory of evolution by natural selection.
• Charles Darwin went to study theology at Cambridge and became an expert in biology. He was invited as the naturalist on the HMS Beagle and ended up writing a book about it. During this voyage he found a "giant armadillo" and a "giant sloth" and wondered about how these bigger versions came to be about?
• Darwin spent 20 years analyzing his notes and spcimen's and putting all the evidence together to support his idea of evolution by natural selection. He knew that the idea would be controversial, so he wanted as much evidence in support as possible. Wrote "Origin of the Species".
• "On the Origin of Species" was published in 1859.
• Charles Darwin conceived of natural selection, but did not publish it. Alfred Russell Wallace independently also comes up with the same idea. Wallace wrote Darwin in 1858 with a paper on natural selection.
• Darwin & Wallace jointly presented natural selection to he Royal Society.
• What are the 3 indisputable observations/facts of natural selection?

  1. More offspring are produced than the food supply can support
  2. There is variation among individuals within all species
  3. The variation is heritable
• Darwin hypothesized that those individuals with variations that allow them to better compete will survive and reproduce more frequently than those individuals without these favorable traits.
• Over successive generations, favorable traits will become fixed in a population and many give rise to new species.
• Natural selection operates on individuals, but it is the population that evolves. Individuals don't change genetically over time, but populations do.
• How many different species of Darwin's finches inhabit the Galapagos, and what is one of the most obvious ways in which the species differ?

  13. Size and shape.
• What are the two species of finches that occur on Daphne Major?

  Cactus Finch and Medium Ground Finch
• What is the main food available to the Daphne Major ground finch population during periods of general food scarcity?

  Seeds, primarily large ones.
• What happened to the finches during the drought?

  Many starved and died because only those with larger beaks could split open the large seeds available. This event selectively penalized the small beaked birds.
• What happened during the El Nino to the finches on Daphne Major?

  The larger seed became more scarce so natural selection favored birds with smaller bills. The larger ground finches died and the species moved towards evolution again.