I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection. Format for printing. The theory of evolution is one of the great intellectual revolutions of human history, drastically changing our perception of the world and of our place in it.
Charles Darwin put forth a coherent theory of evolution and amassed a great body of evidence in support of this theory. In Darwin's time, most scientists fully believed that each organism and each adaptation was the work of the creator. Linneaus established the system of biological classification that we use today, and did so in the spirit of cataloguing God's creations.
In other words, all of the similarities and dissimilarities among groups of organisms that are the result of the branching process creating the great tree of life see Figure 1 , were viewed by early 19th century philosophers and scientists as a consequence of omnipotent design. Figure 1: A phylogenetic "tree of life" constructed by computer analysis of cyochrome c molecules in the organisms shown; there are as many different trees of life as there are methods of analysis for constructing them.
However, by the 19th Century, a number of natural historians were beginning to think of evolutionary change as an explanation for patterns observed in nature. The following ideas were part of the intellectual climate of Darwin's time. This habit sustained for long, has had the result in all members of its race that the forelegs have grown longer than the hind legs and that its neck has become so stretched, that the giraffe, without standing on its hind legs, lifts its head to a height of six meters.
In essence, this says that the necks of Giraffes became long as a result of continually stretching to reach high foliage. Larmarck was incorrect in the hypothesized mechanism, of course, but his example makes clear that naturalists were thinking about the possibility of evolutionary change in the early 's. Darwin's Theory. Species populations of interbreeding organisms change over time and space. The representatives of species living today differ from those that lived in the recent past, and populations in different geographic regions today differ slightly in form or behavior.
These differences extend into the fossil record, which provides ample support for this claim. All organisms share common ancestors with other organisms. Over time, populations may divide into different species, which share a common ancestral population.
Far enough back in time, any pair of organisms shares a common ancestor. For example, humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees about eight million years ago, with whales about 60 million years ago, and with kangaroos over million years ago. Shared ancestry explains the similarities of organisms that are classified together: their similarities reflect the inheritance of traits from a common ancestor. Since then, biologists and paleontologists have documented a broad spectrum of slow to rapid rates of evolutionary change within lineages.
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Ryan Gregory. Reprints and Permissions. Gregory, T. Evo Edu Outreach 2, — Download citation. Received : 14 March Accepted : 16 March Published : 09 April Issue Date : June Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search all BMC articles Search. Download PDF. Volume 2 Supplement 2. Abstract Natural selection is one of the central mechanisms of evolutionary change and is the process responsible for the evolution of adaptive features. Introduction Natural selection is a non-random difference in reproductive output among replicating entities, often due indirectly to differences in survival in a particular environment, leading to an increase in the proportion of beneficial, heritable characteristics within a population from one generation to the next.
The Basis and Basics of Natural Selection Though rudimentary forms of the idea had been presented earlier e. Full size image. Darwinian Fitness The Meaning of Fitness in Evolutionary Biology In order to study the operation and effects of natural selection, it is important to have a means of describing and quantifying the relationships between genotype gene complement , phenotype physical and behavioral features , survival, and reproduction in particular environments.
Which Traits Are the Most Fit? Natural Selection and Adaptive Evolution Natural Selection and the Evolution of Populations Though each has been tested and shown to be accurate, none of the observations and inferences that underlies natural selection is sufficient individually to provide a mechanism for evolutionary change Footnote 6.
Several important points can be drawn from even such an oversimplified rendition: 1. Natural Selection Is Elegant, Logical, and Notoriously Difficult to Grasp The Extent of the Problem In its most basic form, natural selection is an elegant theory that effectively explains the obviously good fit of living things to their environments.
A Catalog of Common Misconceptions Whereas the causes of cognitive barriers to understanding remain to be determined, their consequences are well documented. Table 3 Major concepts relating to adaptive evolution by natural selection, summarizing both correct and intuitive incorrect interpretations see also Fig. Concluding Remarks Surveys of students at all levels paint a bleak picture regarding the level of understanding of natural selection.
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This is crucially important to conservation geneticists, who grapple with the implications of these evolutionary processes as they design reserves and model the population dynamics of threatened species in fragmented habitats. Aa Aa Aa. Figure 1: Allele-frequency change under directional selection favoring a a dominant advantageous allele and b a recessive advantageous allele. References and Recommended Reading Carroll, S.
Futuyma, D. Evolutionary Biology , 3rd ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Wright, S. Evolution: Selected Papers. Share Cancel. Revoke Cancel. Keywords Keywords for this Article. Save Cancel. Flag Inappropriate The Content is: Objectionable. Flag Content Cancel. Email your Friend. Submit Cancel. This content is currently under construction. Explore This Subject. Topic rooms within Evolution Close. No topic rooms are there. Lead Editor: Nick Bisceglia Evolution. Or Browse Visually. Other Topic Rooms Ecology.
Student Voices. Creature Cast. Simply Science. Extinctions seem to be occurring at a much faster rate today than they did in the past, as shown in the fossil record.
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The theory of natural selection was explored by 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin. Natural selection explains how genetic traits of a species may change over time. This may lead to speciation, the formation of a distinct new species.
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