Development of Evolutionary Thought

Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist,
physician, and zoologist who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming
organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy".
His two most important contributions to taxonomy were:
1. A hierarchical classification system
eight taxa: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.
2. The system of binomial nomenclature (a 2-part naming method)
is the formal system of naming species whereby each species is indicated by a two-part name, a
capitalized genus name followed by a lowercase specific epithet or specific name, with both names
italicized (or underlined if handwritten,
During his lifetime, Linnaeus collected around 40,000 specimens of plants, animals, and shells.
He believed it was important to have a standard way of grouping and naming species. So in 1735, he
published his first edition of Systema Naturae (The System of Nature), which was a small pamphlet
explaining his new system of the classification of nature.
He continued to publish more editions of Systema Naturaethat included more named species. In
total, Linnaeus named 4,400 animal species and 7,700 plant species using his binomial nomenclature
system.

Linnaeus's Classification System

In Systema Naturae, Linnaeus classified nature into a hierarchy. He proposed that there were
three broad groups, called kingdoms, into which the whole of nature could fit. These kingdoms were
animals, plants, and minerals. He divided each of these kingdoms into classes. Classes were divided
into orders. These were further divided into genera (genus is singular) and then species. We still use this
system today, but we have made some changes.
Today, we only use this system to classify living things. (Linnaeus included nonliving things in his
mineral kingdom.) Also, we have added a few additional levels in the hierarchy. The broadest level of life
is now a domain. All living things fit into only three domains: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. Within
each of these domains there are kingdoms. For example, Eukarya includes the kingdoms Animalia, Fungi,
Plantae, and more. Each kingdom contains phyla (singular is phylum), followed by class, order, family,
genus, and species. Each level of classification is also called a taxon (plural is taxa).

2. Thomas Robert
In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation's
food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because
it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level.
In other words, mankind had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for
maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the " Malthusian trap" or the
"Malthusian spectre".
Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship and want and greater
susceptibility to famine and disease, a view that is sometimes referred to as a Malthusian catastrophe.

3. Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier – fossils, paleontology and
the theory of Catastrophism
, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology".
Cuvier was a major figure in natural sciences research in the early 19th century and was instrumental in
establishing the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living
animals with fossils.
Cuvier's work is considered the foundation of vertebrate paleontology, and he expanded Linnaean
taxonomy by grouping classes into phyla and incorporating both fossils and living species into the
classification.
Cuvier is also known for establishing extinction as a fact—at the time, extinction was considered by
many of Cuvier's contemporaries to be merely controversial speculation. In his Essay on the Theory of
the Earth (1813) Cuvier proposed that now-extinct species had been wiped out by periodic catastrophic
flooding events. In this way, Cuvier became the most influential proponent
of catastrophism in geology in the early 19th century.

4. James Hutton – theory of Gradualism

  He originated the theory of uniformitarianism—a fundamental principle of geology—that explains the
features of the Earth's crust by means of natural processes over geologic time. Hutton's work
established geology as a science, and as a result he is referred to as the "Father of Modern Geology".

THEORY OF GRADUALISM
 Gradualism was proposed by James Hutton in 1795 to explain the geologic state of the earth.
 Gradualism is the changes in Earth’s crust due to slow continuous processes.

5. Charles Lyell – principles of geology

- He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which presented uniformitarianism–the idea
that the Earth was shaped by the same scientific processes still in operation today–to the broad general
public.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck’s Theory

1. Principle of use and disuse
 The Principle of Use and Disuse states that if an organ is used, it will become stronger,
and if it is not used, it will weaken and may disappear in future generations. Lamarck
believed that disuse cause a train to become reduced.

• 2. Theory of inheritance of acquired traits

 Is the hypothesis that an organism can pass on characteristics that it has acquired
through use or disuse during its lifetime to its offspring. It is also known as the
inheritance of acquired.
 If an organism changes during life in order to adapt to its environment, those changes
are passed on its offspring.
3. Charles Darwin’s Voyage

The Voyage of the Beagle. In 1831, when Darwin was just 22 years old, he set sail on a
scientific expedition on a ship called the HMS Beagle. He was the naturalist on the voyage. As a
naturalist, it was his job to observe and collect specimens of plants, animals, rocks, and fossils wherever
the expedition went ashore.
On his visit to the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin discovered several species of finches
that varied from island to island, which helped him to develop his theory of natural selection. ... They
also helped investigate evolutionary changes in Darwin's finches.
  Darwin's 4 principles of natural selection
The four key points of Darwin's Theory of Evolution are:
 1. Variation. Organisms (within populations) exhibit individual variation in appearance and behavior. ...-
individuals of a species are not identical;
2. Inheritance - traits are passed from generation to generation;
 3. High rate of population growth - more offspring are born than can survive;
 4. Differential survival and reproduction. - only the survivors of the competition for resources will
reproduce

Descent with modification is simply passing traits from parent to offspring, and this concept is one of
the fundamental ideas behind Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Struggle for existence. It refers to the competition between living things to survive. This, and the similar
phrase struggle for life, were used over 40 times by Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species

Artificial selection. The breeding of plants and animals to produce desirable traits. Organisms with the
desired traits, such as size or taste, are artificially mated or cross-pollinated with organisms with similar
desired traits. 
 Darwin made use of artificial selection to help gather evidence to explain his theory of
evolution when he returned to England from his journey to the Galapagos Islands on the HMS
Beagle. After studying the finches on the islands, Darwin turned to breeding birds— specifically
pigeons—at home to try and prove his ideas.

Neo-Darwinian theory

Contribution of Mendelian Genetics - Mendel's Laws

Mendel proposed particles that could be recombined. As long as the particles associated with a trait
survived in the population there was some probability that the trait encoded by the particles would
remain in the population.
says that individual traits are "coded' by pairs of particles

Law of Segregation
states that, 'the alleles of a given locus segregate into separate gametes.' Alleles sort independently
because the gene is located on a specific chromosome.

Law of Independent Assortment

describes how different genes independently separate from one another when reproductive cells
develop.
states that allele pairs separate during the formation of gametes.

The Law of Dominance

states that one type of allele (the dominant) can dominate the other (the recessive). This means that in
a pair of alleles with a dominant and recessive allele, the dominant trait will show. The only way for a
recessive trait to show is if both alleles were recessive.

POPULATION GENETICS
Evolution can be defined as the change in allele frequencies in a population. For this definition to be
useful, we must also define the terms "allele frequency" and "population". A population is a group of
freely interbreeding individuals. Alleles are different forms of the same gene.
Population genetics began as a reconciliation of Mendelian inheritance and biostatistics models. Natural
selection will only cause evolution if there is enough genetic variation in a population. Before the
discovery of Mendelian genetics, one common hypothesis was blending inheritance.
Ronald Fisher
A theoretical population geneticist who developed the mathematics to show exactly how many genes
acting together could produce the precise quantitative degrees of familial resemblance that are
observed.

USE OF DATA FROM BIOGEOGRAPHY, COMPARATIVE MORPHOLOGY, COMPARATIVE EMBRYOLOGY,

PALEONTOLOGY

paleontology
Paleontology, is the scientific study concerned with fossils of animals and plants. To determine
organism's evolution and interactions with each other and their environments.
By looking at the pictures we can concude that the hippo and the whale are closely related and have a
common ancestor.

Paleontology supports the evolution theory by :

By the dna samples we can get from fossils (specially skeletons) to conduct dna tests of two different
organisms if they are closely related or not and using radiometric dating to determine how old the
fossils were.
By the fossils collected, we can closely examine the skeleton parts closely alike from two different
animals to compare them to each other and examine physical evolutionary changes of sekeletons from
same species.

Comparative Embryology
is the comparison of embryo development across species. All embryos pass from single cells to multi-
celled zygotes, clumps of cells called morulas, and hollow balls of cells called blastulas, before they
differentiate, creating the organs and systems of the body.
supports the theory of evolution because scientists have found that the embryos of many different
species show similarities, which implies they share a common origin. For example, in humans the
embryo passes through a stage in which it has a gill structure similar to that of fish.

Taxonomy
Evolutionary taxonomy
is a branch of biological classification that seeks to classify organisms using a combination of
phylogenetic relationship (shared descent), progenitor-descendant relationship (serial descent), and
degree of evolutionary change.
Evolutionary taxonomy differs from strict pre-Darwinian Linnaean taxonomy (producing orderly lists
only), in that it builds evolutionary trees. While in phylogenetic nomenclature each taxon must consist of
a single ancestral node and all its descendants.

Biogeography
Biogeography and Evolution
is the study of the geographical distributions of biological organisms. Many geographical features
provide barriers to species, allowing scientists to observe how they evolve separately from one another.
Species are distributed around the globe largely in relation to their genetic relationships to one another,
with some understood exceptions.
Continents, Plate Tectonics and Islands
One of the most significant pieces of proof for evolution comes from the study of island or continental
biogeography.
Charles Darwin's most important discoveries occurred on remote islands, such as the Galapagos. In
these remote locations, Darwin noticed that there were unique species not found anywhere else.

Comparative morphology
is analysis of the patterns of the locus of structures within the body plan of an organism, and forms the
basis of taxonomical categorization. Functional morphology is the study of the relationship between the
structure and function of morphological features.
is an important tool that helps determine evolutionary relationships between organisms and whether or
not they share common ancestors. Anatomical similarities between organisms support the idea that
these organisms evolved from a common ancestor.

Rules for binomial nomenclature

General rules
Although the fine details of binomial nomenclature will differ, certain aspects are universally adopted:
 The scientific name of each species is formed by the combination of two words—as signified
equally by "binomial," "binominal," and "binary"—and the two words are in a modern form of
Latin:
1. a first word, the genus name, is also called the generic name.
2. a second word giving the particular species within the genus is called by several different
technical terms:
 specific descriptor is a general term applied to the word identifying the species;
 specific name is applied in zoology to the word identifying the species;
 specific epithet is applied in botany to the word identifying the species.
 Species names are usually typeset in italics; for example, Homo sapiens. Generally, the binomial
should be printed in a type-face (font) different from that used in the normal text; for example,
"Several more Homo sapiens were discovered." When handwritten, species names should
be underlined; for example, Homosapiens. Each name should be underlined individually.
 The genus name is always written with an initial capital letter.
 In zoology, the specific name is never written with an initial capital.
For example, the tiger species is Panthera tigris
 In botany, an earlier tradition of capitalizing the specific epithet when it was based on the name
of a person or place has been largely discontinued, so the specific epithet is written usually all in
lower case.
For example, Narcissus papyraceus