THEORIES OF EVOLUTION

Jean Baptiste LAMARCK 1744 1829

Lamarck rejected fixity He proposed a theory of evolution which is attractive but it was eventually rejected because of the way inheritance works

Lamarck

Adaptation and specialisation

Lamarck noticed that organisms adapted to a particular niche had well developed specialised organs For example a carnivore will have long canine teeth to grip its prey

The Law of Use and Disuse

He proposed that if an organ is used a lot it will develop and strengthen If it is not used it will atrophy He called this the law of use and disuse

2008 Paul Billiet ODWS

The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics

if an organism developed a characteristic feature through adapting to a new way of life during its lifetime, it would pass this on to its offspring The classic example given is that of the giraffes neck:

LAMARK

Disproving Lamarck

Characteristics acquired during the lifetime of a parent are not passed onto the offspring An athlete who develops a large muscle mass through training does not have children who already possess this large muscle mass Ernst Haeckel In an attempt to disprove Lamarckism he is said to have cut off the tails of mice for several generations. The babies born from this line of tailless mice still grew tails as long as their ancestors. This was not exactly a fair test as the mice had not stopped using their tails in an attempt to adapt to their environment. They still found their tails useful

Lamarckism in evolution theory today

evolutionary

change takes place gradually and constantly

In some cases evolution leads to complexity

learned behaviour patterns can be changed within a generation Members of a social group who have acquired the behaviour in their lifetimes will pass these learned skills onto others including their children

Natural Selection
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Insect eaters Seed eaters

2006-2007

Bud eater

Charles Darwin

Proposed a way how evolution works

How did creatures change over time? by natural selection

Collected a lot of evidence to support his ideas

1809-1882 British naturalist

Voyage of the HMS Beagle

Invited to travel around the world

1831-1836 (22 years old!) makes many observations of nature main mission of the Beagle was to chart South American coastline

Robert Fitzroy

Voyage of the HMS Beagle

Stopped in Galapagos Islands

500 miles off coast of Ecuador

Galapagos
Recently formed volcanic islands. Most of animals on the Galpagos live nowhere else in world, but they look like species living on South American mainland.

800 km west of Ecuador

species

Darwin asked: Why were these creatures found only on the Galapagos Islands?

Alfred Wallace

Family of Modest Means Limited education, worked many jobs: construction, surveying, assistant to a watchmaker, teacher... Loved natural history and the outdoors With naturalist Henry Bates, traveled to Brazil, explored the Amazon, sold collections of biological specimens, especially insects

Wallaces Formative Years

1848: Wallace and Bates sailed for South America, gathered large collections 1852: Sailed back to England, ship caught fire and sank after 3 weeks! Passengers rescued but collections lost! 1859: Bates gathered more than 14,000 species in Brazil 1854: Wallace collected in the Malay Archipelago & recognized the Archipelago as biologically divided by a narrow strait, separating Asian fauna from Australian fauna, still recognized as Wallace's Line.

Wallace Forms His Ideas on Natural Selection

Applied geological idea of uniformitarianism to biology Charts of a species might look more like a tree than a straight line No species came into existence unless coexisted with another similar species that was its predecessor 1855: Wrote paper arguing for evolution of species, searching for a

June 1858: Wallace drafted his thoughts, sent them in letter to Darwin, Darwin was shattered

Wallace and Darwin

July 1858: Joint credit was given to Darwin & Wallace at Linnaean Society The announcement attracted no particular scientific or public attention! 1859: Darwin worked intensely for the next year on his manuscript, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), sold out on day of

Natural Selection
Theory of Natural Selection was based on: Observation 1 organisms are potentially capable of producing large numbers of o spring. Observation 2 There is a competition for resources Observation 3 All living things vary. Di erent members of the same species are all slightly di erent Deduction 1 There is a universal struggle for survival. More organisms of each kind are born than can possibly obtain food and survive. Individuals with some kind of advantage have the best chance of surviving and reproducing their own kind

Observation 1 organisms are potentially capable of producing large numbers of ospring.

Observation 2 There is a competition for resources

Observation 3 All living things vary. Dierent members of the same species are all slightly dierent

Deduction
There is a universal struggle for survival. More organisms of each kind are born than can possibly obtain food and survive. Individuals with some kind of advantage have the best chance of surviving and reproducing

Biston betularia

Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1850)

White color, lives over trunks, which are commonly covered in lichens. Non visible for predators: Birds. Bernard Kettlewell (1907-1979)

There are mutated individuals with dark pigmentation Formas melnicas: Carbonaria (CC) Insularia (Cc) Forma silvestre: Tpica (cc)

Around 1850, during industrial revolution, atmosphere pollution reduced the presence of lichens The trunks of trees turned dark colour

White moths turned to be easy prey for birds

IN 1900, Moths were 99% dark colour.

 As time has passed, pollution has been reduced Lichens came back to the tree trunks and the situation changed again

The white moth is now the most common one, as it was before.

Suppose there is a population of rabbits. The color of the rabbits is governed by two incompletely dominant traits: black fur represented by B and white fur represented by b. A rabbit with the genotype of BB would have a phenotype of black fur, a genotype of Bb would have gray fur (a display of both black and white) and a genotype of bb would have a phenotype of white fur. If this population of rabbits were put into an area that had very dark black rocks as well as very white colored stone, What kind of selection would you predict?

Modes of selection

Types of evolution
1. Divergent evolution 2. Convergent evolution

Divergent Evolution

1. Divergent evolution

Two different populations of a species that experience different selection pressures may as a result become genetically different from one another

Once in a very great while, the two populations will become so different that they cannot reproduce together anymore (this then becomes speciation).

Divergent Evolution

http://www.biology-online.org/images/darwin_finches.jpg

Divergent Evolution

Divergent Evolution

Divergent Evolution

Convergent Evolution

2. Convergent evolution

Start with two very different species; they experience similar selection pressures and through time come to look and/or behave similarly.

Convergent Evolution
Fish Reptile Mammal What is the similar selection pressure?

Convergent Evolution

Convergent Evolution
What is the similar selection pressure?
http://www.votawphotography.com /photo/Animals/animals.htm

Speed to catch prey (cheetah) and speed to win races and be bred.

http://www.hundekosmos.de/images/greyhound_517.jpg

Convergent Evolution
Placental Mammals Marsupial Mammals

THE PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM MODEL

They observed that the fossil record gives a different picture for the evolution They claim that there were long periods of stasis (410 million years) involving little evolutionary change Then occasional rapid formation of new species As little as 5,000 - 50,000 years

Stephen J Gould

Niles Eldredge

2008 Paul Billiet ODWS

Graph of Gradual Evolution

http://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/images/graph_of_ph

Graph Depicts Punctuated Equilibrium

http://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/images/graph_of_punctuated_equilibrium_2.gif

Homework

State what mechanisms of evolution do you know and describe it in one paragraph