Evolution

Evolution is the change in population over time

Population: all members of one species in one
place.
Species: members can interbreed and produce
fertile offspring.

Evidence of evolution
Fossil record
 it provides evidence for the evolutionary change
through now extinct forms that led to modern species.
 99% of all organisms that ever lived on earth are now
extinct.

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 Radioactive dating is a process by which the
approximate age of an object is determined through
the use of certain radioactive nuclides.
 A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life
form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral
group and its derived descendant group.
 Archaeopteryx as a transitional fossil between
dinosaurs and modern birds.

Comparative biochemistry:
 the study of evolutionary relationships or similarities
in biological processes among living organisms.
 It employs genes (nucleotide sequence), and proteins
(amino acid sequence).
 Organisms that have a common ancestor will have
common biochemical pathways.
 Humans and mice are both mammals. So medical
searchers can test new medicines on mice and
extrapolate the results to humans.

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 Comparative embryology:
 the study of similarities in embryos of different
species.
 Similarities in embryos are evidence of common
ancestry.
 All vertebrate embryos, for example, have gill slits
and tails.

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 Comparative biogeography:
 The study of where organisms live now, and where
their ancestors lived in the past.

 About 200 million years ago, all the continents on

Earth were actually one huge "supercontinent"
surrounded by one enormous ocean. This gigantic
continent, called Pangaea, slowly broke apart and
spread out to form the continents we know today.

Comparative anatomy:
 it determines 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.

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 A) Analogous B) Homologous
structure structure
same function different function

Different structure Same structure

Different ancestry Same ancestry

(convergent evolution) (Divergent evolution)

Ex: wings of bat, bird, and Ex: forelimbs of vertebrates

butterfly

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C) vestigial structure:
body structure that greatly reduced in
function(useless) that may have been useful in
ancestor. Ex: appendix. Wisdom teeth, coccyx. Ear
muscle femur bone in whale.

Heterotroph hypothesis
first cells were anaerobic prokaryote
heterotrophic and would have fed on organic
molecules that had been made without cells.
Theory of endosymbiosis
organelles such as chloroplasts and mitochondria
were free-living prokaryotes which lived symbiotically
within larger heterotrophic prokaryotic cells, forming
modern day eukaryotic cells.

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Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.
life started in water.
first prokaryotic cell evolved about 3.5 billion
years ago.
First prokaryotic cells evolved to eukaryotic cell
about 1.5 billion years ago.
Cambrian explosion part of the Palaeozoic era,
happened 540 million years ago, when most of the
major groups of animals first appear in the fossil
record.

Amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds evolved

after fish.

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Several characters enabled animals and plants to
move to land:
In animals:
1) Appearance of lungs.
2) Appearance of limbs to move out.
3) Skin to keep animals from dehydration.
4) Internal fertilization.
5) Hard shell to protect egg.

In plants:
1) Root anchor plants in soil to absorb water.
2) Vascular tissue to transport water upward.
3) Waxy substance protects leaves from dehydration.
4) Seeds have hard coat to protect embryo and its
food.

Oparin - Haldane Hypothesis

The Oparin-Haldane hypothesis suggests that life
arose gradually from inorganic molecules, with
“building blocks” like amino acids forming first and
then combining to make complex polymers.

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 Miller-Urey experiment

Ancient environment consisted of CH4(methane),

NH3(ammonia), H2O, and H2, but lack free oxygen.
Intense heat, lightning, and U.V. radiation in primitive
atmosphere provided energy for chemical reactions
that produced first cell.
Urey and Miller are scientists mimic this early
atmosphere to determine how first molecules and
early life developed.

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 Theories of evolution

Spontaneous generation:
The theory of spontaneous generation held that living
creatures could arise from non-living matter.
Francesco Redi concluded that the flies laid eggs on
the meat in the open jar caused the maggots.
If the flies could not lay eggs on the meat in the
covered jar, no maggots were produced.
Redi proved that decaying meat did not produce
maggots.

Louis Pasteur boiled a meat broth in a swan neck

flask,
the bend in the neck of the flask prevented falling
microbes from reaching the broth.
Only bottle with broken neck will show microbial
growth from the air.

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Gradualism:
Darwin states that organisms descend from a
common ancestor gradually.
Big changes occur by accumulation of many small
ones.
Scientists abandoned this theory because traditional
fossils are rarely found.

Punctuated Equilibrium:
Stephen Gould and Niles Eldridge proposed
that new species arise suddenly after long period of
stasis.
Fossil record confirms this model.

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Use and Disuse: (individual evolution)
Lamarck theory relied on ideas of inheritance of
acquired characteristics
He states that individual organisms change in
response to environment.
As giraffe developed a long neck to eat leaves of tall
acacia tree, and pass this acquired trait of elongated
neck to their offspring.

Weismann disapprove this theory by cutting tails

of 22 generations of mice, but he found that size of
tails in subsequent generations was not affected.

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Natural selection (the modern
theory of evolution):
Darwin proposed that frequency of an allele in
population can change due to selective advantages.
This theory includes following points:

1)Over production: populations tend to grow

exponentially, to over populate and exceed their
resources.

2)Variation:
 living organisms differ in size, colour, strength…
etc. some individuals have more favourable
variations.
 Variation is the raw material of natural selection.

3)Struggle for existence: living organisms

compete for food, water, space, and other
requirements in environment.

4)Survival of the fittest: degree of fittest is

measured by ability of an individual to survive and
reproduce.
Best-fit individuals survive and pass on their traits to
offspring.

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 Examples of natural selection

A) Giraffe and long neck:

Ancestral giraffes were short-necked, although neck
length varied individually.
Giraffe population competed for limited food.
Taller individuals had better chance of surviving than
shorter necks.
Over time, proportion of long-neck giraffes increase
until only long neck giraffe exists. (No individual giraffe
neck grew, average length of neck changed in the
population).

B) Peppered Moth colour:

Until 1800 in England, most peppered moths were
light coloured, but dark individuals were rarely found.
With increasing industrialization, smoke and soot
polluted the environment, making all plants and rocks
black.
In 1950, all moths were dark, few light coloureds
were found. Before industrial revolution, white

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 moths were camouflaged while dark moths were
easy prey for predators. After the environments
darkened by pollution, Dark moths were
camouflaged and had selective advantage.

C) Drug Resistance:
Antibiotic kill only susceptible bacteria, while resistant
individuals survive to reproduce.

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 Types of natural selection

Directional selection: a mode of natural

selection in which a single extreme phenotype is
favoured, causing the allele frequency to continuously
shift in one direction.
 Natural selection for long giraffe nick, against short
neck.

Stabilizing selection: a type of natural

selection in which genetic diversity decreases as the
population stabilizes after the intermediate trait was
favoured.
 Human Infants with low birth weight will be weak and
experience health problems, while large babies will
have problems passing through the birth canal.
Babies with average birth weight are more likely to
survive than a baby that is too small or too large.

Disruptive selection: (or diversifying

selection) a mode of natural selection in which both
extreme phenotypes are favoured over intermediate
values
 Light-coloured oysters would blend into the rocks,
and the darkest would blend better into the shadows.
The ones in the intermediate range would show up
against either backdrop, offering those oysters no
advantage and make them easier prey.

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 Causes of variation in population

Mutation:
It is Change in genetic material, and the raw material
for variation that is the raw material for evolution.

Genetic Drift:
Change in gene pool due to chance, it is two types:

A.Bottle Neck effect:

Natural disasters such as fire, earthquake, and flood
reduce size of population, resulting in loss of genetic
variation especially in small population.

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B.Founder Effect:
it is the reduction in genetic variation that results
when a small subset of a large population is used to
establish a new colony(migrate).
The new population may be very different from the
original population, both in terms of its genotypes
and phenotypes.

Gene Flow:
Movement of alleles into or out of population.
It occurs as a result of migration of fertile individuals or
gametes between populations.
For example, pollen carried by wind across mountain
between two valleys.

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 Population Stability

HARDY-WEINBERG EQUILIBRIUM

The Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is a principle stating

that the allele frequency in a population will remain
constant (no evolution) from one generation to the
next in presence of some factors:
1_ population must be very large.
2_ population must be isolated.
3_ no mutation.
4_ mating must be random.
5_ no genetic drift.
6_ no natural selection.

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 Reproductive Isolation and speciation
Speciation is the process by which new species form.
It occurs when groups in a species become
reproductively isolated.

Geographic isolation:
Occur when species are separated by mountains,
canyons, rivers or glaciers. That cause isolation
between species

Polyploidy:
many flowering plants, and majority of ferns are
polyploid.
Polyploid organisms cannot breed with organisms that
are not polyploid, and isolated from them.

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 Temporal isolation:
Individuals of different species do not mate because
they are sexually active at different times of day or in
different seasons.

Habitat isolation:
occurs when different habitat lowers the probability of
mating between individuals.

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 Behavioural isolation:
it occurs when populations begin to develop different
behaviours that are not preferred by members in another
population.

Patterns of evolution

Coevolution:
It is the evolutionary change in interacting
populations over time resulting from the
interactions between them.
For example, pollinator-plant
relationships(mutualism). Honeybee that lives on
nectar of flower, flower has tripping mechanism that
arches stamens (male part) over bee and dust it with
pollen. Some of bees will rub off into pistil (female part)
of another flower.

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 Parallel evolution:
it is the similar development of a trait in distinct species that are
not closely related, but share a similar original trait in response
to similar evolutionary pressure.

Adaptive radiation:
it is emergence of numerous species from a single common
ancestor.
Darwin discovered 14 species of finches each filling a
different niche. They all evolved from single ancestral species.

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 The phylogenetic tree
A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree)
is a branching diagram or a tree showing the
evolutionary relationships among various biological
species or other entities based upon similarities and
differences in their physical or genetic characteristics.

Types of diversity

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A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic
region that is both a significant reservoir of biodiversity
and threatened with destruction.by human..

Artificial selection
Artificial selection is the identification by humans of
desirable traits in plants and animals, and the steps
taken to enhance and perpetuate those traits in future
generations.

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