Speciation and Evolutionary Thought

• Evolution


  The process of gradual change in a population that can also lead to new species arising from older species evolution, not because of descent from a common ancestor
• The thought that species change had been suggested and debated well even before Charles Darwin began to explore this idea
• Plato


  Species were static and unchanging
• Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon


  • A naturalist who reintroduced the ideas about evolution
  • Observed that various geographic regions have different plant and animal populations even when the environments are similar
• James Hutton


  A Scottish naturalist proposed that geological change (gradualism) occurred gradually by the accumulation of small changes from processes operating like they are today over long periods of time
• Charles Lyell


  His ideas were influential on Darwin's thinking: Lyell's notion of greater age of Earth gave more time for gradual change in species, and the process of change provided an analogy for gradual change in species
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck


  Published a book that detailed a mechanism for evolutionary change, which has important influence on evolutionary thought
• Charles Darwin


  • Wrote the book "Origin of the Species"
  • Knew artificial selection could change domestic species over time. He inferred that natural selection could also change species over time. In fact, he thought that if a species changed enough, it might evolve into a new species
• Scientific classification


  A method by which biologists organize living things into groups. It is also called taxonomy
• Carolus Linnaeus


  • The most influential early classification system
  • A Swedish botanist who lived during the 1700s
  • Known as the "father of taxonomy"
  • Tried to describe and classify the entire known natural world
  • In 1735, he published his classification system in a work called Systema Naturae ("System of Nature")