16.1 and 16.

2 Bio Notes:
Darwin’s Theory of Evolution:
● If you’d met young Charles Darwin, you probably wouldn’t have guessed that his ideas
would change the way we look at the world. As a boy, Darwin wasn’t a star student.

● Yet Charles would one day come up with one of the most important scientific theories of
all time.
● Born in England February 12, 1809

● At the time, scientists views of the natural world were shifting

○ Geologists thought Earth was old and changing!!

○ Biologists thought life was changing too!!

● His trip upon the HMS Beagle started in 1831 (he was 22!)

● The voyage lasted 5 years

● From his research and observations, Darwin developed the theory of EVOLUTION

● EVOLUTION: The theory that explains how modern organisms evolved over long
periods of time through descent from common ancestors

Darwin’s Observations:
In a single days trip to the Brazilian rainforest, Darwin collected 68 species of beetles, and he
wasn’t even looking for beetles!

As Darwin traveled, he noticed three distinctive patterns of biological diversity:

1. Species vary GLOBALLY

2. Species vary LOCALLY

3. Species vary OVER TIME

Darwin Concluded That:

● Different, yet ecologically similar, animal species inhabited separated, but ecologically
similar, habitats around the globe.

● Similar looking animal species lived in similar habitats around the world
Species Vary Locally:
● Darwin noticed that different, yet related, animal species often occupied different habitats
within a local area
● Related species that look different, live in different areas locally
● In addition, Darwin noticed several types of small brown birds on the islands with beaks
of different shapes. He didn’t consider these smaller birds to be unusual or important—at
first.
● Darwin also collected fossils, which are the preserved remains or traces of ancient
organisms.

● Darwin noticed that some fossils of extinct animals were similar to living species

Other Thoughts About Change…:

● Think of a husband and wife who exercise regularly at the gym, build up their muscles,
and then later have a baby.

● Do you think the big muscles of the parents will be passed on to their child?

● An early nineteenth century scientist named Lamarck thought traits organisms

developed during their life could be passed on to their offspring.

Lamarck’s Evolutionary Hypothesis:

● Other scientists were also proposing differing ideas about how life was evolving
● Jean-Baptiste Lamarck suggested that organisms could change during their lifetimes
by selectively using or not using parts of their bodies.
● He also suggested that individuals could pass these acquired traits on to their
offspring, enabling species to change over time!
● Why are these ideas hypotheses and not theories?
● We know that Lamarck’s hypotheses were incorrect in several ways:

1. Organisms don’t get to ‘choose’ to become perfect, they can not ‘choose’ to
become better
 2. We also now know, that traits acquired by individuals during their lifetime CANNOT
be passed to their offspring

On the plus side……

1. Lamarck was one of the first scientists to try to explain evolution using natural
processes

2. He also showed a link between an organism and its environment

Malthus’s View of Population Growth:

• In 1798, English economist Thomas Malthus noted that humans were being born
faster than people were dying, causing overcrowding.

• The forces that work against population growth, Malthus suggested, include war,
famine, and disease.

• He reasoned that if the human population grew unchecked, there wouldn’t be

enough living space and food for everyone
• Darwin realized that Malthus’s idea applied even more to other species. For
example: Trees, oysters

Artificial Selection:

● To find an explanation for change in nature, Darwin studied change produced by plant
and animal breeders.

● Breeders knew that individual organisms vary, and that some of this variation could be
passed from parents to offspring and used to improve crops and livestock.
● For example, farmers would select for breeding only trees that produced the largest
fruit or cows that produced the most milk.

○ Over time, this selective breeding would produce trees with even bigger fruit and
cows that gave even more milk.
● Darwin called this selective breeding process artificial selection, a process in which
nature provides the variations, and humans select those they find useful.
 ● Darwin put artificial selection to the test by raising and breeding plants and fancy pigeon
varieties.

16.3 Bio Notes:

Think About It:

• Then, in 1858, Darwin reviewed an essay containing similar ideas about evolution by Alfred
Russel Wallace, an English naturalist working in Malaysia. Not wanting to get “scooped,”
Darwin decided to move forward with his own work.

• Wallace’s essay was presented together with some of Darwin’s observations at a scientific
meeting in 1858. The next year, Darwin published his first complete work on evolution: On the
Origin of Species.

The Struggle for Existence:

● After reading Malthus, Darwin realized that if more individuals are produced than can
survive, members of a population must compete to obtain food, living space, and other
limited necessities of life.
● Darwin described this as the struggle for existence.

Variation and Adaptation:

● Darwin knew that individuals have natural variations among their heritable traits.
○ He hypothesized that some of those variants are better suited to life in their
environment than others.

● Any heritable characteristic that increases an organism’s ability to survive and

reproduce in its environment is called an adaptation.
● The scarlet king snake exhibits mimicry—an adaptation in which an organism copies, or
mimics, a more dangerous organism. Although the scarlet king snake is harmless, it
looks like the poisonous eastern coral snake, so predators avoid it, too.
● Scorpion fish coloring is an example of camouflage—an adaptation that allows an
organism to blend into its background and avoid predation.
● Many adaptations also involve behaviors, such as the complex avoidance strategies
prey species use.
 ● For example, a crane will display defensive behavior in an effort to scare off an
approaching fox.

Survival of the Fittest

● According to Darwin, differences in adaptations affect an individual’s fitness.

○ Fitness describes how well an organism can survive and reproduce in its
environment.
■ Individuals with adaptations that are well-suited to their environment can
survive and reproduce and are said to have HIGH fitness.
■ Individuals with characteristics that are not well-suited to their
environment either die without reproducing or leave few offspring and are
said to have LOW fitness.
• This difference in rates of survival and reproduction is called survival of the fittest.
In evolutionary terms, survival means reproducing and passing adaptations on to the
next generation.

Natural Selection:

• Darwin named his mechanism for evolution natural selection because of its

similarities to artificial selection.

• Natural selection is the process by which organisms with variations most suited to
their local environment survive and leave more offspring.

• In natural selection, the environment — not a farmer or animal breeder - influences

fitness
• Natural selection does not make organisms “better.” Adaptations don’t have to be
perfect—just good enough to enable an organism to pass its genes to the next generation.

• Natural selection also doesn’t move in a fixed direction. There is no one, perfect way of
doing something. Natural selection is simply a process that enables organisms to survive
and reproduce in a local environment.
• If local environmental conditions change, some traits that were once adaptive may no longer
be useful, and different traits may become adaptive.
• If environmental conditions change faster than a species can adapt to those changes,
the species may become extinct.

Natural Selection Conditions:

● In a population, there must me more individuals born than die

● There must be inherited variation - mutations
● There must be varied levels of fitness (not everyone can be fit!)

Common Descent:
● Natural selection depends on the ability of organisms to reproduce and leave
descendants. Every organism alive today is descended from parents who survived and
reproduced.

● Just as well-adapted individuals in a species survive and reproduce, well-adapted

species survive over time.

● Darwin proposed that, over many generations, adaptation could cause successful
species to evolve into new species.

● He also proposed that living species are descended, with modification, from common
ancestors—an idea called descent with modification.

● According to the principle of common descent, all species—living and extinct—are

descended from ancient common ancestors.
● Darwin based his explanation for the diversity of life on the idea that species change
over time.

● This page from one of Darwin’s notebooks shows the first evolutionary tree ever drawn.
This sketch shows Darwin’s explanation for how descent with modification could produce
the diversity of life.
● A single “tree of life” links all living things.

16.4 Bio Notes:

The Age of the Earth:
● Evolution takes a long time. If life has evolved, then Earth must be very old.
● Hutton and Lyell argued that Earth was indeed very old, but technology in their day
couldn’t determine just how old.
● Geologists now use radioactivity to establish the age of certain rocks and fossils.
Radioactive dating indicates that Earth is about 4.5 billion years old — plenty of time
for evolution by natural selection to take place.

Recent Fossil Finds:

● Darwin’s study of fossils had convinced him and other scientists that life evolved

a. Paleontologists in 1859 hadn’t found enough fossils of intermediate forms

of life to document the evolution of modern species from their ancestors.

● Since Darwin, paleontologists have discovered hundreds of fossils that document

intermediate stages in the evolution of many different groups of modern species.
● One recently discovered fossil series documents the evolution of whales from ancient
land mammals, based on fossil evidence.
● The exceptions to the reconstructions are the modern Mysticete and Odontocete.
● The limb structure of Ambulocetus (“walking whale”) suggests that these animals could
both swim in shallow water and walk on land.
● The hind limbs of Rodhocetus were short and probably not able to bear much weight.
Paleontologists think that these animals spent most of their time in the water.
● Basilosaurus had a streamlined body and reduced hind limbs. These skeletal features
suggest that Basilosaurus spent its entire life swimming in the ocean.
● Modern whales retain reduced pelvic bones and, in some cases, upper and lower limb
bones. However, these structures no longer play a role in locomotion.

● Other recent fossil finds connect the dots between dinosaurs and birds, and between
fish and four-legged land animals.

Homologous Structures:
● These limbs evolved, with modifications, from the front limbs of a common ancestor
 whose bones resembled those of an ancient fish.

● Similarities and differences among homologous structures help determine how recently
species shared a common ancestor.
● Although they are used differently, the basic skeletal structure is the same and they are
derived from the same embryonic origin
Analogous Structures:
● Analogous structures are structures in different species having the same appearance,
structure or function but have evolved separately, thus do not share common ancestor.
● Wings of insects and birds used for flying
● Jointed legs of insects and vertebrates used for locomotion
● Fins of fish and flippers of whales (mammals)

Vestigial Structures:
● The wings of a flightless cormorant and the legs of an Italian three-toed skink are
vestigial structures.
● Why would an organism possess structures with little or no function? One possibility is
that the presence of a vestigial structure does not affect an organism’s fitness. In that
case, natural selection would not eliminate it.

Embryology:
● Recent observations make clear that the same groups of embryonic cells develop in the
same order and in similar patterns to produce many homologous tissues and organs in
vertebrates.
● Similar patterns of embryological development provide further evidence that
organisms have descended from a common ancestor.
● Evolutionary theory explains the existence of homologous structures adapted to different
purposes as the result of descent with modification from a common ancestor
● **Evolutionary theory explains how homologous structures have different
purposes as a result of descent from a common ancestor

Genetics and Molecular Biology:

● Darwin had no idea how heredity worked, and he was worried that this lack of knowledge
 might prove fatal to his theory.

● As it happens, some of the strongest evidence supporting evolutionary theory

comes from genetics.

● Also, we now understand how mutation and the reshuffling of genes during sexual
reproduction produce the heritable variation on which natural selection operates.

Homologous Molecules:
● Genes can be homologous, too. One example is a set of genes that determine the
identities of body parts.

● Known as Hox genes, they help to determine the head to tail axis in embryonic
development.

● In vertebrates, sets of homologous Hox genes direct the growth of front and hind
limbs.

● Small changes in these genes can produce dramatic changes in the structures they
control.
● At least some homologous Hox genes are found in almost all multicellular animals, from
fruit flies to humans.

● For example, bacteria that live in a hot spring are very different from animals, yet many
of their genes, and therefore the proteins coded by those genes, are similar to those of
animals.

● Such profound biochemical similarities are best explained by Darwin’s conclusion:

Living organisms evolved through descent with modification from a common
ancestor.

A Testable Hypothesis:
● Darwin hypothesized that the Galápagos finches had descended from a common
ancestor.

● He noted that several finch species have beaks of very different sizes and shapes. Each
 species uses its beak like a specialized tool to pick up and handle its food. Different
types of foods are most easily handled with beaks of different sizes and shapes.

● Darwin proposed that natural selection had shaped the beaks of different bird
populations as they became adapted to eat different foods. No one thought there was a
way to test this hypothesis until Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton University
came along.

Natural Selection:
● The Grants’ data have shown that individual finches with different-size beaks have
better or worse chances of surviving both seasonal droughts and longer dry
spells.
○ When food becomes scarce during dry periods, birds with the largest beaks are
more likely to survive.
● Changes in food supply created selection pressure that caused finch populations
to evolve within decades. This evolutionary change occurred much faster than many
researchers thought possible.

● The Grants have documented that natural selection takes place in wild finch populations
frequently, and sometimes rapidly.
● The Grants’ data also confirm that competition and environmental change drive
natural selection.
○ Traits that don’t matter much under one set of environmental conditions became
adaptive as the environment changes during a drought.
○ Without heritable variation in beak sizes, the medium ground finch would not be
able to adapt to feeding on larger, tougher seeds during a drought.
● The Grants’ work shows that variation within a species increases the likelihood of
the species’ adapting to and surviving environmental change.

Evaluating Evolutionary Theory:

● Like any scientific theory, evolutionary theory is constantly reviewed as new data are
gathered.
● Researchers still debate important questions, such as precisely how new species arise
and why species become extinct.

● There is also significant uncertainty about exactly how life began.

● However, any questions that remain are about how evolution works—not whether
evolution occurs. To scientists, evolution is the key to understanding the natural world.