Darwin - MT3 - Part 1 Flashcards
What were Darwin’s achievements? (4)
- He made a convincing case for the reality of evolutionary change
- first time it was widely accepted - He killed essentialism in biology
- He presented a reasonable mechanism for evolution
- natural selection - He explained the apparent design and purpose in organisms in a natural way
- he banished teleological explanation from biology
What did purpose gradually change into for Darwin?
Function
- refers to the organisms and how it functions in the environment
What was Darwin free of all his life?
Financial worries
- inherited significant wealth
- had successful books
- invested money wisely
What did Darwin initially study?
Medicine
What did Darwin lack when studying medicine? (2)
- Interest
2. Motivation
What was Darwin’s pet tortoise’s name?
Harriet
What did Darwin secretly start thinking of?
Evolution
What did Darwin call evolution?
Species transmutation
What did Darwin suffer from? (7)
- Stomach upset
- Vomiting
- Trembling
- Boils
- Palpitations
- Anxiety
- Stress
- when his health deteriorated he remained poor for the rest of his life
What 3 diseases did Darwin have?
- Chron’s disease
- Chagas disease
- Psychosematic illness
What did Darwin research at Down House? (8)
- Barnacles
- Evolution
- Earthworms
- Animal behaviour
- Insectivorous
- Power of movement in plants
- Plant reproduction
- Domesticated plants and animals and their variations
What was Darwin’s evolution work the result of?
Primary observation by himself and others
What did people think Darwin had? (2)
- Photographic memory
2. The ability to tie different ideas together
What convinced Darwin that evolution occurs?
The observations and material he had gathered on his voyages
What was Darwin interested in?
Finches from the Galapagos Islands
Why was the Galapagos Island a good place to observe natural selection? (2)
- It was a volcanic island (time zero)
2. Hard to get to/isolated
What did Darwin search for?
The cause of evolutionary change
- wondered what natural phenomenon could select for certain inherited traits
- -> artificial selection
Artificial selection
The breeder controls what characteristics are selected to remodel species
What did Thomas Malthus create?
A curve
- thought human population would grow exponentially
- available resources were linear
- the difference between the 2 lines he classified as human misery
The Sketch – 1842
Darwin wrote out his evolution ideas in a manuscript
- did not publish in his lifetime
The Essay – 1844
Was the expanded version of the sketch
- had all Darwin’s major ideas
- not published either
Why did Chambers book make Darwin more confident?
Because it matched a lot of his ideas with the book
Why did Darwin keep his essay a secret? (3)
- Wasnt a strong case to withstand the critisism that would come
- Terrified and chickened out
- didnt like controversy - Needed to acquire a reputation as a strong scientist by some other kind of work
- studied barnacles
What experiment did Darwin do when he returned to his evolutionary work?
He germinated a lot of seeds and when they poked up he marked them and came back when they matured and counted the markers where there were no plants
- most seeds faced mortality because he looked were they were seedless
- dying young
What did Alfred Russel Wallace create?
The Wallace line
Wallace line
Is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859, that separates the eco-zones of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia
Who did Darwin take advice from when he could not get in touch with Wallace quickly? (2)
- Lyell
2. Hooker
