WEEK 1 - EVOLUTION AND CHARLES DARWIN + ENDLESS FORMS MOST BEAUTIFUL

Evolution and Charles Darwin

1809 - 1882

 

      In one of my subjects I'm taking which is Cell & Development Biology, the first topic I'm learned in week one is Evolution & Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. What is evolution?

     

      Evolution is change through time and it helps us to understand the history of life. There are some ideas on evolution prior to Darwin:

1. Aristotle - arranged organisms from simple to complex and visualized them as not perfect moving to perfectness.
2. Lamarck - evolution occurred by the inheritance of acquired characteristics and they are subject to a force which moves them from simplicity to complexity and environmental force fine-tune them to fir fit their biological niche more efficiently.
3. Charles Lyell - the earth must very old and it has been subjected to the same sort of natural processes in the past just like in the present time

      Darwin had proposed and demonstrated that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors through the process called 'natural selection'.

   

The long neck of the giraffe was not an adaption for reaching

the tops of the trees, but rather due to mutation , variation 

and sexual selection

       

        Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution  through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. 

My lecturer ask for watch this video " Endless Forms Most Beautiful" :
 http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/endless-forms-most-beautiful  

         There are some main idea that lead to Darwin's theory. He gathered evidence in the Voyage of the Beagle for 5 years.

1. Darwin observed variation among island species
2. Darwin realized species could adapt to their environment
3. Darwin observed fossil and geologic evidence of an ancient Earth 

There are four main principle of natural selection:

1. variation
2. overproduction
3. adaption 
4. descent with modification