BIOLOGYII

MECHANISM OF
EVOLUTION
LECTURE-1
Organisms illustrate three key features about life:

 The striking ways in which organisms are suited for life in their
environments (here environment refers to other organisms as well as
to the physical aspects of an organism’s surroundings.)

 The many shared characteristics of life

 The rich diversity of life

Overview
• A new era of biology began in 1859 when Charles Darwin
published “The Origin of Species”

• The Origin of Species focused biologists’ attention on the great

diversity of organisms
 Evolution as “descent with modification”, a phrase that
Darwin used to propose that Earth’s many species are
descendants of ancestral species that were different from the
present-day species.

 Evolution can also be defined as a change in the genetic

composition of a population from generation to generation.

 Evolution can be viewed as both a pattern and a process.

 KEY CONCEPTS

 The Darwinian revolution challenged traditional views

of a young earth inhabited by unchanging species.

 Descent with modification by natural selection explains

the adaptations of organisms and the unity and
diversity of life.

 Evolution is supported by an overwhelming amount of

scientific evidence.
Concept1: The Darwinian revolution challenged
traditional views of a young earth inhabited by
unchanging species.

 To understand why Darwin’s ideas were revolutionary,

we must examine them in relation to other Western
ideas about Earth and its life
Swedish physician and botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–
1778), interpreted organismal adaptations as evidence that the
Creator had designed each species for a specific purpose.

• In 1750s, he developed binomial nomenclature (such as

Homo sapiens for humans) and adopted a nested
classification system.

• He grouped similar species in the same genus, similar genera

(plural of genus) are grouped in the same family, and so on.

• Linnaeus was the founder of taxonomy, the branch of biology

concerned with classifying organisms.
Ideas About Change over Time

• Among other sources of information, Darwin’s idea

was also influenced by the work of scientists studying
fossils, the remains or traces of organisms from the
past.
• Many fossils are found in sedimentary rocks formed
from the sand and mud that settle to the bottom of
seas, lakes, and swamp.
• New layers of sediment cover older ones and
compress them into super imposed layers of rock
called strata (singular, stratum). The fossils in a
particular stratum give an idea about organisms that
populated Earth at the time that layer formed.
 In 1795, Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726–1797) and
Charles Lyell (1797–1875) perceived that changes on Earth’s
surface can result from slow and gradual mechanism which is still
operating today.

 Darwin agreed that if geologic change results from slow, continuous

actions rather than from sudden events, then Earth must be much
older than the widely accepted age of a few thousand years. He
later reasoned that perhaps similarly slow processes could produce
substantial biological change.
Lamarck’s Hypothesis of Evolution

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744–1829). Lamarck published his

hypothesis in 1809, the year Darwin was born.

By comparing living species with fossil forms, Lamarck

hypothesized that species evolve through use and disuse of body
parts and the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

The mechanisms he proposed are unsupported by evidence

Image source: internet

Darwin rejected the idea of Lamarck, but he, too, thought that
variation was introduced into the evolutionary process in part
through inheritance of acquired characteristics. Experiments
show that traits acquired by use during an individual’s life are
not inherited in the way proposed by Lamarck.
Concept 2: Descent with modification by natural selection
explains the adaptations of organisms and the unity and
diversity of life

 As the 19th century dawned, it was generally believed that

species had remained unchanged since their creation

 However, a few doubts about the permanence of species

were beginning to arise.
 Darwin’s Focus on Adaptation
• In reassessing his observations, Darwin
perceived adaptation to the environment
and the origin of new species as closely
related processes

• From studies made years after Darwin’s

voyage, biologists have concluded that
this is indeed what happened to the
Galápagos finches
Descent with Modification

• Darwin never used the word evolution in the

first edition of The Origin of Species
• The phrase descent with modification
summarized Darwin’s perception of the unity of
life
• The phrase refers to the view that all organisms
are related through descent from an ancestor
that lived in the remote past
 Artificial Selection, Natural Selection, and
Adaptation

• Darwin noted that humans have modified other

species by selecting and breeding individuals with
desired traits, a process called artificial selection.
• As a result of artificial selection, crops, livestock
animals, and pets often bear little resemblance to
their wild ancestors.
Artificial Selection
• Darwin then argued that a similar process (like artificial
selection) occurs in nature. He based his argument on two
observations, from which he drew two inferences:
Observation #1: Members of a population often vary
greatly in their traits
Observation #2: All species can produce more offspring than their environment can
support (Figure) and many of these offspring fail to survive and reproduce.

Inference #1: Individuals whose inherited traits give them a higher probability of
surviving and reproducing in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than do
other individuals.

Inference #2: This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to
the accumulation of favorable traits in the population over generations.
Figure : Camouflage as an example of evolutionary adaptation. Related
species of the insects called mantises have diverse shapes and colors that
evolved in different environments, as seen in this South African flower-eyed
mantis (Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi; top) and Malaysian orchid mantis
(Hymenopus coronatus; bottom).
 Natural Selection: A Summary
• Individuals with certain heritable characteristics
survive and reproduce at a higher rate than
other individuals

• Natural selection increases the adaptation of

organisms to their environment over time

• If an environment changes over time, natural

selection may result in adaptation to these new
conditions and may give rise to new species
• Note that individuals do not evolve; populations
evolve over time

• Natural selection can only increase or decrease

heritable traits in a population

• Adaptations vary with different environments

Concept 3: Evolution is supported by an
overwhelming amount of scientific evidence

 New discoveries continue to fill the gaps

identified by Darwin in The Origin of Species
Direct Observations of Evolutionary Change
1. Natural Selection in Response to Introduced Species
Beak length of soapberry bug
 MRSA

Clone USA300: a virulent strain of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus

aureus (MRSA). Resistant to multiple antibiotics and highly contagious, this
strain and its close relatives can cause lethal infections of the skin, lungs, and
blood. As shown here, researchers have identified key areas of the USA300
genome that code for adaptations that cause its virulent properties.
Homology

• A second type of evidence for evolution comes from

analyzing similarities among different organisms

• Similarity resulting from common ancestry is known as

homology.

• Related species can have characteristics that have an

underlying similarity yet function differently.
3.Anatomical and Molecular Homologies
Mammalian forelimbs: homologous structures. Even though they have
become adapted for different functions, the forelimbs of all mammals are constructed
from the same basic skeletal elements: one large bone (purple), attached to two
smaller bones (orange and tan), attached to several small bones (gold), attached to
several metacarpals (green), attached to approximately five digits, each of which is
composed of multiple phalanges (blue).
Fossil record
• A third type of evidence for evolution comes from
fossils.

• The fossil record provides evidence of the extinction

of species, the origin of new groups, and changes
within groups over time
For more understanding..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFKnqB-OQcU&t=15s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnxugS3jenY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05UMgdvh8Y