What is Charles Darwin famous for?

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is the foundation upon which modern
evolutionary theory is built. The theory was outlined in Darwin’s seminal work On the Origin of
Species, published in 1859. Although Victorian England (and the rest of the world) was slow to
embrace natural selection as the mechanism that drives evolution, the concept of evolution itself
gained widespread traction by the end of Darwin’s life.

Natural selection, process that results in the adaptation of an organism to its environment by means

of selectively reproducing changes in its genotype, or genetic constitution.

A brief treatment of natural selection follows. For full treatment, see evolution: The concept of
natural selection.

In natural selection, those variations in the genotype (the entire complex of genes inherited from
both parents) that increase an organism’s chances of survival and procreation are preserved and
multiplied from generation to generation at the expense of less advantageous variations. Evolution
often occurs as a consequence of this process. Natural selection may arise from differences in
survival, in fertility, in rate of development, in mating success, or in any other aspect of the life cycle.
All such differences result in natural selection to the extent that they affect the number of progeny
an organism leaves.

Gene frequencies tend to remain constant from generation to generation when disturbing factors
are not present. Factors that disturb the natural equilibrium of gene frequencies include mutation,
migration (or gene flow), random genetic drift, and natural selection. A mutation is a spontaneous
change in the gene frequency that takes place in a population and occurs at a low rate. Migration is a
local change in gene frequency when an individual moves from one population to another and then
interbreeds. Random genetic drift is a change that takes place from one generation to another by a
process of pure chance. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift alter gene frequencies without regard
to whether such changes increase or decrease the likelihood of an organism surviving and
reproducing in its environment. They are all random processes.

Natural selection moderates the disorganizing effects of these processes because it multiplies the
incidence of beneficial mutations over the generations and eliminates harmful ones, since their
carriers leave few or no descendants. Natural selection enhances the preservation of a group of
organisms that are best adjusted to the physical and biological conditions of their environment and
may also result in their improvement in some cases. Some characteristics, such as the
male peacock’s tail, actually decrease the individual organism’s chance of survival. To explain
such anomalies, Darwin posed a theory of “sexual selection.” In contrast to features that result from
natural selection, a structure produced by sexual selection results in an advantage in
the competition for mates.

Theory of Evolution
The theory of evolution is a shortened form of the term “theory of evolution by natural selection,”
which was proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the nineteenth century.

Darwin had the following ideas regarding the theory of natural selection:

o Species keep on evolving or changing with time. As the environment changes, the
requirements of an organism also change and they adapt to the new environment. This
phenomenon of changing over a period of time as per the natural requirements is called
adaptation.
o As per Darwin’s theory, only the superior changes are naturally selected and the inferior
ones are eliminated. Thus, not all adaptations contribute to progressive evolution. For
example, people living in tropical countries have more melanin in their bodies to protect
them from the sunlight.
o Almost all organisms share common ancestry with some organisms. According to
Darwin, all organisms had one common ancestor at some point in time and kept on
diverging ever since. His evolutionary theories support the convergent theory and
divergent theory of evolution with examples.
o He also studied that the birds of Galapagos Island (Darwin’s finches) developed different
beaks as per the availability of the food. This proved adaptive radiation. Similarly, he also
observed the Australian Marsupials which showed a number of marsupials emerging
from an ancestor.
o According to Charles Darwin, evolution is a very slow and gradual process. He concluded
that evolution took place over a very long period of time. As we talk about the time period
in evolution we usually refer to billions of years. The generation of a species from
 another takes a long period of time. It is a very steady process as the changes and
adaptation take a long time to stabilize and give rise to a new species.

Natural selection takes place in four different ways as follows:

1. Variation – The changes accumulated over a period of time in an organism usually give
rise to a new species.
2. Inheritance – It is the passing on of the variations over generations which ultimately
leads to speciation.
3. A high rate of growth of population – This gives rise to more organisms being
reproduced by a species than the environment can support.
4. Differential survival and reproduction – The superior variations lead to the survival of a
particular organism and the inferior or negative variations lead to extinction. The superior
variations are the ones inherited during reproduction.