Chapter 1: Evolutionary Biology: The Evolution of Evolutionary History Flashcards
Evolution, 4th Edition, Douglas J. Futuyma
- Darwin’s __ is one of the most revolutionary ideas in Western thought.
- It was rivaled only by __ and __ theories of physics.
- It profoundly challenged the prevailing worldview, which had originated largely with __ and __, who developed the notion that species have fixed properties.
- theory of biological evolution
- Newton’s; Einstein’s
- Plato; Aristotle
Christians interpreted the biblical account of Genesis literally and concluded that each species had been created individually by God in the same form it has today.
Special Creation
the scale, or ladder, of nature: permanent and unchanging.
“Great Chain of Being” or scala naturae
Established the framework of modern taxonomy in his Systema Naturae (1735)
Carolus Linnaeus
won worldwide fame for his exhaustive classification of plants and animals, undertaken in the hope of discovering the pattern of the creation.
Systema Naturae (1735) of Carolus Linnaeus
Linnaeus classified “related” species into __, “related” __ into __, and so on. To him, “relatedness” meant propinquity in the Creator’s design.
- genera; genera
- orders
a philosophical movement, largely inspired by Newton’s explanations of physical phenomena, adopted reason as the major basis of authority and marked the emergence of science.
Enlightenment (18th Century)
Geologists who expounded the principle of uniformitarianism
James Hutton and Charles Lyell
- that the present is the key to the past.
- holding that the same processes operated in the past as in the present and that the data of geology should therefore be explained by causes that we can now observe.
principle of uniformitarianism
Proposed the most significant pre-Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis in his Philosophie Zoologique (1809)
Chevalier de Lamarck (18th Century)
- Lamarck hypothesized that different organisms originated separately by __ from nonliving matter, starting at the bottom of the chain of being.
- A __ acts within each species, he said, causing it to progress up the chain. Species originated at different times, so we now see a hierarchy of species because they differ in age
- spontaneous generation
- “nervous fluid”
__ argued that species differ from one another because they have different needs, and so use certain of their organs and appendages more than others.
Chevalier de Lamarck (18th Century)
What principle: alterations, acquired during an individual’s lifetime, are inherited
Inheritance of acquired characteristics
the theory of evolution where the principle of inheritance of acquired characteristics is based on
Lamarckism
organisms altered their behavior in response to environmental change. Their changed behavior, in turn, modified their organs, and their offspring inherited those “improved” structures.
Lamarck’s Theory of Evolution
The son of an English physician. He briefly studied medicine in Edinburgh, then turned to studying for a career in the clergy at Cambridge University.
Charles Darwin
In 1831, at the age of 22, Charles Darwin was invited to serve as a __ and __ on the British Navy ship H.M.S. __, tasked with charting the coast of South America.
- naturalist
- captain’s companion
- Beagle
The ornithologist pointed out that Darwin’s specimens of mockingbirds from the Galápagos Islands were so different from one island to another that they represented different species
John Gould
argued that the rate of human population growth is greater than the rate of increase in the food supply so unchecked growth must lead to famine.
Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus essay was the inspiration for Darwin’s great idea, one of the most important ideas in the history of thought: __.
natural selection
Was collecting specimens in the Malay Archipelago, had independently conceived of natural selection
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913)
made significant further contributions to biology, especially about biogeography, the geographic distribution of species.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913)
Charles Darwin’s major work published in 1859
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin’s major work, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, contains two major hypotheses:
1) first, all organisms have descended, with modification, from common ancestral forms of life, and
2) second, that the chief agent of modification is natural selection.
Organisms that are more adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on the genes that aided their success. This process causes species to change and diverge over time.
Natural selection
Unlike Lamarck’s __, in which individual organisms change, Darwin’s is a __, in which the frequency of a variant form (i.e., the proportion of individuals with that variant feature) increases within a population from generation to generation
- transformational theory
- variational theory of change
Theory of evolution provided a new framework for exploring and interpreting the history and diversification of life, a project that was especially promoted by the German zoologist __.
Ernst Haeckel
For about __ years after the publication of The Origin of Species, all but a few faithful Darwinians rejected natural selection, and numerous theories were proposed in its stead. These theories included neo-Lamarckian, orthogenetic, and mutationist theories
- 60
__ includes several theories based on the old idea of inheritance of modifications acquired during an organism’s lifetime.
Neo-Lamarckism
- German biologist
- Experiment: cut off the tails of mice for many generations and showed that this mutilation did not affect the tail length of their descendants.
August Weismann
What theory: the variation that arises is directed toward fixed goals, so that a species evolves in a predetermined direction by some kind of internal drive, without the aid of natural selection.
theories of orthogenesis, or “straight-line evolution”
a theory: were advanced by some geneticists who observed that discretely different new phenotypes can arise by a process of mutation.
Mutationist theories
A theory: supposed that such mutant forms constituted new species and thus believed that natural selection was not necessary to account for the origin of species.
Mutationist theory
- The last influential mutationist
- an accomplished geneticist who nevertheless erroneously argued that the origin of new species and higher taxa is entirely different in kind from evolutionary change within species.
Richard Goldschmidt
- anti-Darwinian ideas
- chief principle: that adaptive evolution is caused by natural selection acting on particulate (Mendelian) genetic variation
evolutionary synthesis or modern synthesis
(or neo-Darwinism)
developed a mathematical theory of population genetics, which showed that mutation and natural selection together cause adaptive evolution: mutation is not an alternative to natural selection but is rather its raw material.
Ronald A. Fisher and John B. S. Haldane (Evolutionary synthesis)
Pioneered the study of genetic variation and change in natural populations, continued by __
- Sergei Chetverikov
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
conveyed the ideas of the population geneticists to other biologists, thus influencing their appreciation of the genetic basis of evolution.
Theodosius Dobzhansky
mutation, gene flow or migration, natural selection, and genetic drift are the major causes of evolution within species (which Dobzhansky
called __)
- microevolution
the evolution of the major alterations that distinguish higher taxa (genera, families, orders, and classes).
macroevolution
established the structure of DNA in 1953, advances in genetics, molecular biology, and molecular and information technology have revolutionized the study of evolution.
James Watson and Francis Crick
- Developed neutral theory of molecular evolution
- argued that most of the evolution of DNA sequences occurs by chance (genetic drift) rather than by natural selection.
Motoo Kimura
