Introduction to ! Evolutionary Biology!

Outline of lecture:!
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Evolutionary Biology!
Historical: ! ! History of life! ! History of origins and extinctions of species! ! Steps by which new features evolved! Causal: ! ! Causes of the origins and extinctions of species?! ! Causes of the origins of new features?! !

! What is evolutionary biology?! ! Background on evolution! ! History of thoughts on evolution! ! Darwin and The Origin of Species! ! The Modern Synthesis!

What is evolution?!
! Evolvere (Latin) = to unfold or unravel! ! change! ! does not include ontogenetic changes! ! Descent with modication (and often with diversication)!

Background of evolution!
! Special creation and a static world! ! nal causes versus efcient causes (Newton)!
! Eidos and Essence! ! the Cave Metaphor!

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Platos essentialism!
! Darwin: species do not have essences!! ! All characteristics can vary! ! All characteristics can be altered radically!

Historical Overview!
Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)! ! Binomial nomenclature! ! Systema Naturae (1735)! ! Essences and variants!

Historical Overview!
Geological perspectives! !
James Hutton (1726-1797)! Uniformitarianism! Theory of the Earth (1785)! ! !
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Historical Overview!
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, ! Chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1829)! ! Philosophie Zoologique (1809)! ! Chains of being! ! Evolution:!
! Organic progression! ! Inheritence of acquired traits!

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)! Principles of Geology (1830-1833)!

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Lamracks theory of " organic progression!

Historical Overview!
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)! ! Political economist ! Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)!
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! Overproduction! ! Impact on Darwin!

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Charles Robert Darwin" (1809-1882)!

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)!

! English naturalist/collector:!
! South America (1848-1852)! ! Malay Archipelago (1854-1862)!

! Key dates:!
! 1844 -- essay outlining ideas on evolution! ! 1856 -- beginning of writing of book! ! 1858 -- received essay from Alfred Russel Wallace!

! 1858 -- Darwin presents his and Wallaces essays to the Linnean Society in London!

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On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life!

On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life!

! Actually the abstract of the book started in 1856! ! Published on November 24, 1859 and revised six times! !

Major theses of book:" 1.! Common ancestry of organisms! 2.! Natural selection!

Variational versus transformational theories of change!

Variational versus transformational theories of change!

Blue individuals have more ! offspring than red ones !

Example: A predominantly red species becomes a predominantly blue one!

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Variational versus transformational theories of change!

Darwins Theories of Evolution!

Enrst Mayr (1904-2005) ! ve theories:
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1.! 2.! 3.! 4.! 5.!

Red individuals (or their descendants) transform into blue ones !

Evolution as such! Common descent! Gradualness! Populational speciation! Natural selection!

Anti-Darwinian theories!
1.! Neo-Lamarckism! 2.! Orthogenesis! 3.! Mutationism!

The Modern Synthesis!

! Resolution of conicts with Darwins theories! ! Genetics, systematics and paleontology !!
! Evolution = Mutation, recombination, natural selection, !

Orthogenesis shows that organisms develop in definite directions without the least regard for utility through purely physiological causes as the result of organic growth. -Theodor Eimer (1895)

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The Modern Synthesis!

! Mathematical theory of population genetics! ! Populations harbor numerous genetic variants (Chetverikov and Dobzhansky)! ! Taxonomy & systematics:!
! evolution of species and evidence against saltation (Mayr & Stebbins)!

Terms and themes!

! Early views on static nature of species (eidos and essences)! ! Geological views of earths history uniformitarianism (Hutton and Lyell)! ! Lamarcks views on species transformation! ! Malthus inuence on Darwin population growth and limiting resources! ! Wallace and his independent discovery of natural selection! ! Darwins theories of evolution! ! Variational versus transformational theories of change! ! Alternative theories of evolution (neo-Lamarckism, orthogenesis and mutationism) and their faults! ! The Modern Synthesis !

! Paleontology:!
! fossil record consistent with evolution by natural selection (Simpson)!

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