Basic Mechanisms of Evolution

• Plato - ancient Greek who viewed species as static and unchanging.
• Aristotle - student of Plato also believed that species are fixed and unchanging; Believed the testament of the bible –” Species were designed by God and perfect”.
• George-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon – introduced ideas about the evolution of animals.
• George-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon - he observed that various geographic regions have different plants and animal populations even when environments are similar.
• James Hutton – proposed that geological change occurred gradually by the accumulation of small changes over long periods.
• James Hutton - the first person to propose a mechanism of natural selection to account for evolutionary change over time.
• Charles Lyell - a friend of Darwin popularized Hutton's view; his view had influenced Darwin.
• Charles Lyell - argued evolution as a sort of biological uniformitarianism that took place from one generation to the next before our very eyes, but it worked too slowly for us to perceive; species gradually changed.
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck - a French scientist who proposed an alternate theory of evolution. He argue that organisms evolve through the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics with Modification in an individual is caused by environment or use and disuse of structures.
• Lamark's Theory of Use and Disuse - body parts that are constantly use are stronger and bigger while those that are not used are weaker and eventually disappear.
• According to Lamarck, acquired traits can be transmitted by the parents to the offspring. He used this to explain why giraffes have very long necks.
• Alfred Wallace - father of biogeography.
• Alfred Wallace - he studied how and why different species were living in different places.
• Biogeography - the study of the distribution of organisms and their evolutionary relationships.
• Charles Darwin - proposed the theory of biological evolution by natural selection.
• 1850s - Darwin wrote an influential and controversial book called On the Origin of Species.
• The mechanism for evolution according to Darwin is: natural selection, organism heritable traits helped organisms survive and reproduce become more common in a population over time.
• On the origin of species using natural selection, Darwin proposed a mechanism by which evolution can lead to the rise of new species of organisms.