Understanding Evolution as a Story of Change

by Ronald Allan L. Cruz

Between the flashy transformation of Pokémon to their more powerful forms and the rise of super-
powered Homo superior mutants from mundane mortals, evolution in popular culture is often seen as a
force of nature that reshapes, reassembles, and ultimately reimagines creatures, often in the direction of
something better. It’s such a tantalizing view of evolution that few bother to check the science behind it.
But what scientists know of evolutionary change makes it a much more exciting and dynamic process
than even Pikachu and the X-Men would have us believe. In the previous chapter, we saw how evolution
drove the enzymatic machineries that allowed the first living organisms to emerge from non-living
organic building blocks. This chapter provides a brief historical context of evolutionary views and
concepts; tackles common misconceptions about evolution; discusses key evidences; explores advances in
the field; and touches on societal implications of evolutionary theories.

A brief history of defining change

Evolution is not a new idea. Though luminaries like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace certainly
made it popular, the idea that organisms change over time has existed long before them. The Greek
philosophers like Aristotle already believed that organisms are not static and do change over time, but
their view of evolution was similar to that of a ladder (a “natural scale of being”): as organisms
“progress,” they move up the ladder one rung at a time, all the way from the state of being inorganic
materials to the realm of the divine (angelhood, if one has done things right). In between, a mineral passes
from being a plant to an animal to a human. It’s all very clearly laid out as a step-by-step path to divinity.

Also often attributed to the Greek philosophers was the concept of “essentialism,” which posited that
species (i.e. groups of similar organisms) are made of the same “idea” or “Form,” and that any deviation
from that essence is an “accidental imperfection.”

These two perspectives would lose much support as reason began to take over as the primary source of
legitimate knowledge and people increasingly turned to science for answers to the big questions in life. It
was in this spirit of scientific discovery, precipitated in the 18th century as the beginning of the Age of
Enlightenment, that Darwin’s and Wallace’s ideas on evolution took shape and ultimately changed the
face of biology.

As many people know by now, it was during Darwin’s tenure as the naturalist (i.e. field scientist) onboard
the United Kingdom’s HMS Beagle during its second voyage from 1831 to 1836 that he formed many of
the ideas that would be the bases for his monumental contributions to evolutionary biology. Though the
Beagle traveled to many different parts of the southern hemisphere, the stopover at the Galápagos
Islands—a group of volcanic islands belonging to the territory of the South American nation Ecuador—
brought him face to face with tortoises (i.e. land turtles) and birds called finches, which would serve as
core examples of what would eventually be called “Darwinian evolution.”

It was quite simple: several of the major islands had its own species of finch, and the differences among
them were clear, particularly with regard to the size and shape of their beaks. Very clearly, their beak
morphology was correlated with their diet; for example, finches that ate large, hard seeds had large,
strong, curved beaks, whereas finches that relied on insects in holes on tree trunks for food had long, thin
beaks for probing (Fig. 1). And yet at the same time, disregarding the beak form, they were all very much
alike in other respects—and they were all also very similar to the finches in mainland South America and
the Caribbean.

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Figure 1. Adaptive radiation of Galapagos finch ancestors (likely from the Caribbean islands) depending
on their diets.

The Cambridge-trained, naturally brilliant, and inquisitive Darwin eventually came up with an intriguing
scenario as an explanation for this set-up: all these different finch species on the islands are descended
from a common ancestral species. When birds of this original species found their way onto the islands
(recent evidences suggest that they were swept there by a storm, and it was not intentional on their part),
they adapted to the distinct type of food available on the island and became reproductively isolated from
the birds on other islands.

Did the beaks somehow transform over time to adjust to the food sources available? Did evolution mold
these beaks into more appropriate shapes? Not directly, and certainly not intentionally. Certain
mutations, or random genetic changes, gradually produced bird forms that had a slight advantage over
others, e.g. a slightly longer and thinner beak for some relatively large insect holes. Given their survival
advantage, these organisms survived long enough to reach reproductive maturity, mate, and produce
offspring, to which they passed on the genes corresponding to that abnormal beak shape. The birds with
the normal beak shape, unable to efficiently utilize the dominant food item on the island, died out. As one
can imagine, what used to be abnormal eventually became the new norm. And so on and so forth until
the characteristic (i.e. beak shape) was further refined through a gradual series of small mutations and
survival and reproduction.

This is Darwinian evolution at its core: it is adaptive (i.e. helps an organism survive) and is dependent on
genetic variation (i.e. not all organisms are alike).

These are clearly at odds with the “natural scale of being” and “essentialism.” The former presupposes
that evolution has a particular direction; organisms evolve toward a particular form. It is clear from one
finch species adaptively radiating to many different species that there is no one particular direction that
evolution can take. It’s largely unpredictable, given the randomness of the mutations that produced the
advantageous physical form. The latter assumes that all organisms of the same species are alike. If that
were true, then an environmental change that kills one organism because of its morphology will kill all the
rest. What will survive, then? What is “survival of the fittest?” This concept of variation among physical
forms of organisms, or what is called the phenotype, is crucial to the understanding of the core
mechanism of Darwinian evolution, namely natural selection.

In forming the idea of natural selection, Darwin was greatly influenced by the studies of two scientists:
the geologist Charles Lyell and the economist Thomas Malthus. Lyell’s ideas of geological change were

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uniformitarian, meaning that the forces and processes that shaped the earth then are the same forces and
processes that shape the earth now. This temporal consistency has given Darwin a baseline for the aging
of organisms and species and their subsequent changes over time.

Malthus’s treatises on human society were particularly important. He has written that while the growth of
human populations is exponential (i.e. curved), the growth of the resources on which humans are
dependent is arithmetic (i.e. linear). The implication is that at a certain point, the population of humans
will be so large that there will not be enough resources to sustain it. This will lead to the collapse of the
system. Applied to all other organisms, as Darwin and his colleague Alfred Russel Wallace did,
ecosystems can sustain only a certain number of organisms before it crashes. There is general scarcity in
resources, and so inevitably there will be competition among organisms for these resources. Some
organisms are better at competing than others, usually because they have the adaptations or traits
necessary for survival. Because they survive, they pass on their genes for these traits to the next
generation, an ability that is called fitness. This is the essence of natural selection.

When we speak of competition and survival, we speak on the level not of individual organisms but of
populations, which are groups of organisms of the same species living together and interbreeding. An
individual does not evolve; changes in its body or chemistry or behavior and in no other organism are
simply developmental changes, or what we call ontogenetic changes. There is evolution if a sufficient
proportion of organisms exhibit this change in the population, such that the frequency of the alternative
form of a gene (called the allele) that codes for this change has significantly increased or decreased over
time.

Bringing all of these ideas together, we can see that Darwinian (or variational) evolution can be
defined as gradual genetic change over time at the population level.

Refining the definition: Darwinian evolution as an “umbrella theory”

Darwinian evolution as currently understood is actually made up of five separate theories, some enjoying
more support than others by way of scientific evidence and even being considered “fact” by many
biologists. Biological facts are those ideas that are readily observable and currently have no scientifically
sound evidence going against them whatsoever.

Evolution as defined, or that organisms change over time, or the non-constancy of species, is the
fundamental fact of evolution (and is one of the five components of Darwinian evolution). The species
and populations that are alive now are not the same from those that have existed in the past, due to the
accumulation of small and large mutations. We’re talking here about billions of years of changes from the
last universal common ancestor to the millions of species that we have in modern times.

The first fact is closely connected to the second, which is that of common descent with modification.
As we had seen from the previous chapter, all life that has existed on Earth evolved from a community of
simple, bacteria-like organisms that we have dubbed the last universal common ancestor or LUCA. This
explains the multiple branches of the tree of life (Fig. 2), with the single common point at the bottom
representing the LUCA and every subsequent branching point representing a common ancestor. These
modifications explain the great diversity of life, which is the topic of the next chapter of this book.

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 Figure 2. One interpretation (out of many) of the “Tree of Life.”

The three remaining components of Darwinian evolution are theories. Gradualism explains that most
evolutionary events are results of accumulations of small, incremental changes over time, and not of
single, sudden mutations (though these are possible, and uncommon events such as these are called
punctuated equilibrium). Gradual change does not necessarily mean slow change, or that evolution will
necessarily take millions of years. Some cases of evolution may be observed over a few generations within
a few decades, as with the experimental case of Trinidad guppies (a fish) whose males become
significantly more brightly colored within that span of time in the absence of its natural predator. Why?
They’re free to shine as bright as they can to attract female partners without risking being eaten by
predators that are equally attracted by their color.

Once again, it’s a matter of survival. In their typical environment with lots of their predators around, the
ones that survive and pass on their genes to the next generation are those whose colors are bright enough
to attract females but not so bright as to be singled out by predators. These genetic changes happen
gradually, incrementally, and not all of a sudden.

This is consistent with the fourth theory, which is populational change. As we had said earlier, it is not
individuals but populations that evolve. The primary way by which we measure this is by looking at the
frequencies of alleles, i.e. alternative forms or manifestations of genes (classic Mendelian example: the tall
and dwarf alleles for the genes for height) and how these frequencies change over time.

A very good case study for populational change is that of the peppered moth or Biston betularia. This moth
is widely distributed throughout the temperate forests of Europe, North America, and Asia. In England
forests, there are two distinct morphs of forms (note: still the same species!) of B. betularia: the white-
bodied form (B. betularia form typica) and the black-bodied form (B. betularia form carbonaria). Prior to the
Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century, when we began to burn fossil fuels and create pollutant soot
and ash, the white-bodied form blended well with the light-colored tree trunks on which they perched,

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while the black-bodied form stood out. B. betularia form carbonaria were thus easy pickings for predatory
birds. And it wasn’t because the birds like them better for their taste or anything like that! It was simply
because birds spotted them more often. Ecologists have estimated that during these times, the frequency
of the allele for black color was a very low at 0.2 (roughly meaning that only 20% of the peppered moths
in a population were black) while the frequency of the allele for the white color was 0.8, i.e. 80% of moths
were white. This was because most black moths were eaten before they could reproduce and pass on their
genes to their offspring.

The soot and ash created by the Industrial Revolution blackened the trees and killed a lot of the lichen
that gave trees their light color, and so, as you might have expected, this drove typica survival down and
carbonaria survival up! Proving that it was not taste that drove the birds to preferentially eat the black
moths, more white moths were now being eaten, simply because they were standing out against the
blackened tree trunks. The allele frequencies shifted considerably. And so we can say that, within a few
decades, evolution had occurred. We can also say, with this one example, that human activity can
influence the evolution of other species.

The fifth core idea of Darwinian evolution is, of course, natural selection. It works on the basis of there
being consistent differences in the survival (adaptive) value of phenotypes in a population. Essentially,
some phenotypes are more fit (capable of surviving and creating offspring) than others. And in the
context of competition for limited resources (the Malthusian concept), this is important in determining
which phenotypes and, ultimately, which individuals survive to pass on their genes to the next generation.

What evolution is not

Many people think of evolution as a force bringing organisms in a particular direction: toward greater and
greater perfection. This is particularly true of those who have a very anthropocentric view of the world
and think that humans, being the epitome of life on Earth, are what animals are destined to be should
they evolve properly.

This is an extremely flawed (and dangerous) view of evolution. There is not a single ideal form for life to
take on, because the environment changes just as organisms do. A trait that is beneficial now might not
be, or might even be detrimental, at any future time. At a given moment when a species thrives in an
environment, then one can say that that species is ideal for that environment. Think of the sponge, one of
the most primitive and least complex animals on Earth. It has retained much of the same form for
hundreds of millions of years, because it is optimal the way that it is: a sedentary organism that need not
move, because the ocean currents bring the food to it through its many pores. Under what circumstances
would a sponge evolve to become human-like? Why would it need to?

Evolution is not a force, much less one that manipulates the matter of a lifeform to make it better at
responding to an environmental change. For example, if island nations on the planet were to drown in
oceanic water due to global warming, humans would not spontaneously form gills just so that the species
could survive. If mutations—which are themselves random and do not appear because there is an
anticipated or realized need—have led to the formation of gills in some humans when the polar ice caps
melt, then good for them. They’re the lucky few.

The characteristics that we have did not all evolve because they gave us a certain advantage as a species.
That is to say, not all of the traits that we have are adaptations. Evolution is commonly seen as adaptive
(i.e. happening through natural selection), but most biologists actually believe that the majority of
evolutionary events for species, including humans, are neutral or non-adaptive. The appearance or
disappearance of an allele from a population is referred to as genetic drift, and it is purely random. Aside
from natural selection, genetic drift is another mechanism for evolution. Most biologists in fact consider
it to be the default mechanism; most evolutionary events are due to genetic drift and not to natural
selection.

Think of this simple example: there is a pasture with cows grazing on grass, and among the grass live
yellow snails and red snails. A cow, while grazing, accidentally steps on a cluster of yellow snails, killing

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them. All of the yellow snails are in that cluster. And so, because of a random occurrence, the allele for
yellow coloration is extinct from the population. The red snails survived not because their being red
prevents them from being stepped on. The cows did not choose to step on yellow snails, and at any given
moment it could have been red snails that they stepped on. That is how genetic drift works.

Another usual point of confusion stems from many people equating evolution with speciation, which is
the process by which new species arise from ancestral species. The assumption is that when a population
evolves, it has become a new species. As we had seen with the examples of the guppies and the peppered
moth, evolution is not necessarily speciation; significant changes in allele frequencies over time do not
signify that a new species has been produced. Speciation events, such as in the radiation of Darwin’s
finches, usually take a very long time (at least a million years, in many cases) and result from complete
reproductive isolation of a population (i.e. its members can no longer mate with other populations of
previously the same species).

Are humans still evolving?

Our species, Homo sapiens, is a very young one, especially when you consider how old the planet is (4.6
billion years, based on very reliable scientific evidence). Based on fossil evidence of closely related species,
most of which are already extinct, the lineage that gave rise to the genus Homo split from the one that
gave rise to chimpanzees around 6 to 8 million years ago (mya); these two lineages share a common
ancestor, which would explain why humans and chimpanzees are genetically very similar. Since that split,
various pre-human groups such as Sahelanthropus, Kenyanthropus, and Australopithecus appeared in the lineage
until, some 2 mya, the first proto-human group (Homo erectus) evolved. From the appearance of
Australopithecus around 4 mya, these early groups began to walk on two feet (i.e. bipedalism), use fire (~3
mya), and use stone tools (~2.5 mya).

Fossil records show that Homo sapiens, “the wise man,” did not evolve from ancestral Homo species until
around 200 thousand years ago (kya). H. sapiens likely co-existed for a while only with two other Homo
species: H. neanderthalensis (the neanderthals) and H. floresiensis (the “hobbit,” whose fossils were
discovered on the Flores islands of Indonesia only in the 2000s) until it became the sole human species
less than 20 kya.

For perspective, think about it this way: if the planet were only one year (365 days) old, H. sapiens
appeared only in the last few hours of the last day, 31 December.

So no, humans did not co-exist with non-bird dinosaurs, which went extinct 65 mya.

Since its emergence around 200 kya, our species has been evolving largely in terms of cranial capacity, size
of the brain, and the cognitive and behavioral capabilities that come with increased brain size and activity,
such as speech. Many modern human behaviors such as trade, creation of art, and burial rites may have
arisen 50 kya. Around 11 kya, humans began to form societies built on agricultural practices, which
allowed us to produce surplus and settle permanently on fertile, water-rich environments. As we have
seen in a previous chapter of this book, this heralded the beginning of the First Wave of Technology (as
per Alvin Toffler).

In the midst of the Third Wave of Technology, are we still evolving as a species? What environmental
pressures, if any, are driving us to evolve? Where will evolution take us?

A lot of the confusion here stems from two misconceptions that we have previously mentioned: that
evolution is always selective/adaptive, and that evolution is equivalent to speciation. Because of the
advancements that we have made in technology and medicine, many of the environmental factors that
would normally provide pressure on us to evolve are circumvented. For example, temperature changes
that would be immediately lethal to other species can be compensated for with artificial temperature
regulations systems such as airconditioning or heating, or diseases that used to be deadly are no longer so
because of improved hygienic practices and the effectivity of medicines. So natural selection may not be
as strong on humans as it should be, but that does not mean that we are no longer evolving. Recall that

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most evolutionary events may actually be due to non-adaptive, random genetic drift. According to Mary
Pavelka of the University of Calgary: “…we do not make equal contributions to the next generation, and
thus we are still evolving.” So long as certain humans are more successful at finding mates and producing
children than others are, due to certain traits, we will be evolving as a species.

Still, there are quite many examples of H. sapiens evolving via selection. The Eskimos of North America
and the Buriat tribe of Siberia have broader skulls than the norm for humans, thus lessening the surface
area to volume ratio of their heads and thereby reducing heat loss in their cold environments. Whereas
most adult humans especially in Africa and Asia are lactose-intolerant because they cannot produce the
enzyme (lactase) that breaks down lactose in milk, 70% of Europeans are lactase-persistent; they have that
enzyme and so are not lactose-intolerant. These Europeans are those in populations that for the last 5,000
to 10,000 years have subsisted on dairy farming. In fact, in some dairy farming populations, 100% of
individuals are lactase-persistent. The genetic predisposition among Asians toward general alcohol
intolerance, often leading to what is called “Asian flush,” is another example.

The greatest selective pressure on humans comes from diseases. Many of the genes that biologists have
identified as possible products of selection are associated with protection against or resistance to diseases
such as malaria, hypertension, small pox, or even acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Those
that have evolved these genes through mutations are likelier to survive to reproductive age and pass on
these genes to their offspring. Chris Tyler-Smith of the Sanger Institute surmises that “As long as some
people die before reproducing or reaching reproductive age, selection is likely to be acting.”

Selection may play an even stronger role in human evolution in the coming years if detrimental
environmental changes are not significantly curbed. Peter Keightley of the University of Edinburgh
cautions:

There has been a relaxation in selective pressures in industrialized societies. But our
ability to sustain that relaxation is probably temporary. We are using up our energy
resources, our population is growing, and the climate is changing. All this is bound to
lead to greater difficulties and renewed selective pressures.

Evolution and society

Like the natural sciences in general, evolution is amoral; it does not strive to teach us what is right and
what is wrong. In itself, it takes no stand on moral issues and so is neutral. Just like with our use of
technology, the morals and ethics will become important when it comes to how we use our knowledge of
evolution.

Certainly, this knowledge has led to very important applications. Many of our practices in agriculture,
food production, livestock rearing, and plant and animal domestication work on evolutionary principles.
Our selective breeding of crops such as vegetables and fruits and livestock such as cows, pigs, and
chickens based on desired characteristics is based on the concept of selection; selective breeding is a
primary example of artificial selection induced for specific socio-economic benefits. The various breeds
of domestic dog is another good example. From the time that the wolf, Canis lupus (the ancestors to all
dogs, which constitute a wolf subspecies, Canis lupus familiaris) began to co-exist cooperatively with
humans, we have been removing unwanted traits (such as ferociousness) from and retaining desired traits
in dog lineages. This experiment has led to specific “designs” for dog breeds based on preferred
characteristics but has also produced unforeseen complications such as deafness or bone brittleness in
certain breeds.

Our knowledge of human diseases has also been enhanced by evolutionary concepts, not only in the
context of human resistance to pathogens as have been discussed, but also the other way around: these
disease-causing agents like bacteria are evolving just as we are. The evolution of antibiotic resistance
among bacteria is one of the most important and most troubling medical issues that we are currently
facing. Many bacterial species have developed strong resistances to most of the antibiotics that we have
produced. Bacteria that undergo random mutations conferring upon them the antibiotic resistance quickly

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reproduce, passing on these genes very efficiently among a large number of offspring, eventually
proliferating and replacing those that have been killed by antibiotics.

However, evolutionary principles can also be and have been used for more morally suspect practices. A
society that dictates which characteristics in its population are desired and which are not can potentially
develop and enact policies that will preserve the former by allowing only individuals bearing those traits
to mate. This unethical practice of eugenics is not the norm among human societies because of strict
moral and ethical codes that we have set in place. Without these, such horrendous practices as ethnic
cleansing and genocide, which have tainted our history as a species (perhaps nowhere more apparent than
in the atrocities committed by the Nazi Germans during the second World War), will be much more
rampant. Inequalities in society, such as between the rich and the poor or between the healthy and the
sick, are justified by certain people as being the natural course of events, with the “strong” being naturally
more deserving of survival over the “weak.” This warping of the concept of “survival of the fittest” to
justify injustices or expansionism is an example of social Darwinism, a slippery slope that Darwin likely
did not anticipate when he introduced his revolutionary scientific ideas to the world.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535-475 BC) believed that change is central to the
universe. The same could be said of the lifeforms that live in that universe; it is reasonable to assume that
should there be life on other planets, they would be following the same principles of evolution that
organisms on Earth do. At its core, evolution is a story of change: populations change just as others do and
just as the environment does. In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice:
“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” Organisms adapt and
evolve (“running”) not only to gain reproductive advantage over others but also to simply survive (“keep
in the same place”). For example, predators and prey co-evolve (e.g. prey evolves stronger shells, predator
evolves stronger claws, prey evolves poisons, predator evolves resistance to toxins, etc.) just to continue
co-existing, not for one to totally and conclusively defeat the other. In homage to Carroll’s literary
creation, evolutionary biologists have called this concept the Red Queen Hypothesis.

Evolution is widely misunderstood, leading to a resistance to learning more about it—and even to
teaching it—for fear of getting the facts wrong, not being able to defend the ideas, or going against
fundamentalist religious doctrine. The negative effects of this ignorance could range from unfortunate,
preventing us from fully grasping human physiology and behavior or the antibiotic resistance of harmful
microorganisms, to dangerous, such as when the principles are used to justify unjust inequalities in human
society or even direct, violent actions toward cultures seen to be “inferior.” Belief in evolution need not
be in conflict with belief in God, for evolutionary concepts primarily explain mechanisms for the
continuous expansion of the tree of life that includes us and all of the wondrous creatures that we share
this world with.

Perhaps comfort can be found in the ongoing evolution of the human species. There is no way to predict
where evolution will take H. sapiens in a hundred, or a thousand, or a million years with 100% accuracy,
but that we are capable of changing is unquestionable. If this change is toward altruism and greater
stewardship of the environment, then it is toward realizing a stable and sustainable role as only one
species of astoundingly many.

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Guide Questions:

1. How are the concepts of “a natural scale of being” and “essentialism” inconsistent with major
concepts of Darwinian evolution?
2. What are the five theories of Darwinian evolution?
3. Natural selection is often referred to in popular culture as “survival of the fittest.” Is this a good
interpretation of natural selection? Why or why not?
4. What are the most common misconceptions about evolution?
5. Are humans still evolving? How so?
6. What applications has human society developed from evolutionary concepts?

Points for Reflection:

1. What does our knowledge of human evolution teach us about our roles and responsibilities in the
history of life on Earth?
2. Do the principles of evolution explain and justify views of racial superiority that have had a long
history in human society? Explain.
3. Are there certain factors or circumstances that predispose many people to misunderstanding or
denying evolution? What are these?
4. What can our evolutionary history as a species (Homo sapiens) teach us about ourselves as
individuals and as a society?
5. Is evolution moral or immoral? Can it be a dangerous idea?

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References:
Balter, M. (2005). Are humans still evolving? Science, 309, 234-237.
Burns, K.J., Hackett, S.J., & Klein, N.K. (2002). Phylogenetic relationships and morphological diversity in
Darwin's finches and their relatives. Evolution, 56, 1240-1252.
Endler, J.A. (1980). Natural selection on color patterns in Poecilia reticulata. Evolution, 34, 76-91.
Futuyma, D.J. (2013). Evolution, 3rd ed. Sunderland, MA): Sinauer Associates, Inc.
Mayr, E. (2001). What evolution is. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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