THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION
- Change over time and the process by which modern organisms have descended from
ancient organism

CHARLES DARWIN
- Father of Evolution
- Formulated the theory of evolution by Natural Selection
- In his book “on the origin of species” in 1859

MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION (5 key mechanism)

● GENETIC DRIFT
- Change in the gene pool of a population due to chance
- Types of genetic drift:
1. Bottleneck effect
- takes place when population decreases
- population has a sudden reduction in the gene pool due to natural environmental
events, natural disasters, disease, or human involvement (google)

2. Founder Effect
- happens when a small population of organism separates from the larger
group to invade a new area

● GENE FLOW
- movement of genes from one population to another
- tendency to increase the gene diversity in the populations
- another term to remember: migration

● MUTATION
- change in the genetic makeup caused by environmental stressors
- this process expands diversity of organism
- Types of Mutation:
1. MUTATION IN ANIMALS
example
When an ancestral Hyla chrysocells gray treefrog failed to sort its 24 chromosomes
during meiosis, the result was H. versicolor. This treefrog is identical in size, shape
and color to H. chrysocells but has 48 chromosomes and a mating call that is
different from the original H chrysocells.

2. MUTATION IN HUMANS
example
Color Blindness is an example of mutation that affects the perception of color.
It is caused either by deletion of a critical region that regulates expression of the
red/green gene array, or by mutations that inactivate the red and green pigment
genes.

● NATURAL SELECTION
- explains the difference in survival of individual and reproduce in a particular
environment
- also known as “survival of the fittest
- a mechanism of evolution that favors the survival and reproduction of
organisms with traits that are better suited to their environment (google)
- examples of natural selection:

1. Lactose Tolerance
- Between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, a DNA changed happened enabling the
lactase gene to be switched on and lactase production to continue, even after
weaning

2. Neck-Stretching Leaf-Eating Theory

- According to Darwin the long neck of the giraffe is the result of natural selection
acting through the animal's tree-feeding habit
● NON-RANDOM MATING
- increases the frequency of animal with desirable traits
- it intrudes the natural pool of gene variations
- example:
1. Human Population
people usually select mates non-randomly for traits that are easily observable

● JEAN BAPTISTE LAMARCK

❖ Theory of Use and Disuse

- Same idea ng natural selection
- the idea that organisms can physically adapt to their environment and
pass on these new traits to their offspring (google)
- refers to the concept that all organisms physically adjust to their
environment in ways that these new physical characteristics could be
inherited by their offspring (google)

PHYLOGENY

- Greek word: phylon=tribe and genesis=origin

❖ PHYLOGENIC TREE
- Represent evolutionary relationships among organism
- Map of evolutionary history
- Rooted phylogenetic trees have single lineage at the base representing a
common ancestor
❖ STRUCTURE OF ROOTED PHYLOGENETIC TREE
A. Branch point - the point where split occurs

B. Basal taxon - lineage that evolved early from the root and remains
unbranched (walang umusbong)

C. Sister taxa - point of two lineages stem from the same branch

D. Polytomy - branch with more than two lineages

E. Root - indicates that an ancestral lineage gave rise to all organism on the
tree (pinagmulan)

❖ CLADOGRAM
- A diagram that depicts evolutionary relationships among groups
- Closely related organism are classified together with all organisms that
share a common ancestor
-
A. MONOPHYLETIC
- Also called as “clade”
- Group of species each of which includes an ancestral species and all of its
descendants

B. PARAPHYLETIC
- Refers to recent common ancestor but not all descendants are included

C. POLYPHYLETIC
- Recent common ancestors are not included only distant relative

D. POLYTOMY
- Indicates more than two immediate descendants
- The result of insufficient phylogenetic information