History of Evolution Flashcards
What two things did Darwin not have an explanation for?
He didn’t know the mechanism by which inheritance occurred and he didn’t know how variability was generated in pops
Darwin’s idea that there is common ancestry between all species and more closely related organisms have a more common relative
Common descent
How did the community respond to Darwin and why?
His idea was rejected bc scientists didn’t like the idea of splitting lineage
Lamarcks two ideas
Transformism and inheritance of acquired characters
The postulate of more offspring being produced than can survive in every generation (biological competition)
Differential survival
Idea that the physical world and its life forms are fixed and all members of a class share unchanging properties that define class
Essentialism
What are Darwins 4 postulates of natural selection?
- Variation
- Inheritance
- Differential survival
- Extinction
Wrote a paper on natural selection and sent it to Darwin before Darwin published
Wallace
The postulate that individuals who survive and reproduce poorly will die off
Extinction
What did Darwin say was the outcome of evolution?
Descent with modification (parent to offspring)
Two ideas that influenced Darwin the most
Gradualism (Hutton) and unifromitariansism (Lyell)
Gave us the idea of biological competition; population competing for certain number of resources
Malthus
Idea that lineages exist forever but change in form, no extinction or branching of lineages
Transformism (Lamarck)
Idea historical changes result from uniform geological processes that still occur today (erosion, sedimentation, etc)
Lyell, uniformitarianism
What did Darwin observe about domesticated varieties of organisms?
Diff species could look similar (wolves) but same species could look diff (terriers)
Idea that new varieties arise by preferentially breeding individuals showing specific desirable traits
Artificial selection
Gave us the binomial nomenclature to name living things
Linnaeus
Darwin’s idea that differences among organisms have accumulated in small increments over a long time
Gradualness of change over time
Noticed organisms looked different in different parts of the world and falsely thought they changed upon moving to new area
Leclerc
What other 3 things did Darwin propose other than natural selection?
Gradualness of change over time, population differentiation, common descent
Idea that Earths physical features gradually changed due to slow geological processes
Hutton, gradualism
First to come up with extinction, contributing it to discrete catastrophic events
Cuvier
What did Darwin observe about the Galapagos finches that was a huge difference from birds in South America?
13 species of finches had as much variability as 9 families of birds in South America. They were extremely variable
Darwin’s proposed mechanism of evolution
Natural selection
