Portal:Evolutionary biology

The Evolutionary Biology Portal

Introduction

Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology that analyzes the four mechanisms of evolution: natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, and gene flow. The purpose of evolutionary biology is to observe the diversity of life on Earth. The idea of natural selection was first researched by Charles Darwin as he studied bird beaks. The discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology. Huxley was able to take what Charles Darwin discovered and elaborate to build on his understandings.

The investigational range of current research has widened to encompass the genetic architecture of adaptation, molecular evolution, and the different forces that contribute to evolution, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and biogeography. The newer field of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") investigates how embryogenesis is controlled, thus yielding a wider synthesis that integrates developmental biology with the fields of study covered by the earlier evolutionary synthesis. (Full article...)

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The Transmutation of species and transformism are 18th and early 19th-century ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection. The French Transformisme was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory, and other 18th and 19th century proponents of pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas included Denis Diderot, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Erasmus Darwin, Robert Grant, and Robert Chambers, the anonymous author of the 1844 book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Such ideas were associated with 18th century ideas of Deism and human progress. Opposition in the scientific community to these early theories of evolution, led by influential scientists like the anatomists Georges Cuvier and Richard Owen, and the geologist Charles Lyell, was intense. The debate over them was an important stage in the history of evolutionary thought and influenced the subsequent reaction to Darwin's theory. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various evolutionary biology-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1The pax-6 gene controls development of eyes of different types across the animal kingdom. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 2Gaur (Indian bison) can interbreed with domestic cattle. (from Speciation)
Image 3A mutation has caused this moss rose plant to produce flowers of different colours. This is a somatic mutation that may also be passed on in the germline. (from Mutation)
Image 4A red tulip exhibiting a partially yellow petal due to a somatic mutation in a cell that formed that petal (from Mutation)
Image 5Homologous Hox genes in such different animals as insects and vertebrates control embryonic development and hence the form of adult bodies. These genes have been highly conserved through hundreds of millions of years of evolution. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 6African pygmy kingfisher, showing coloration shared by all adults of that species to a high degree of fidelity. (from Speciation)
Image 7Point mutations classified by impact on protein (from Mutation)
Image 8The distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of mutations in vesicular stomatitis virus. In this experiment, random mutations were introduced into the virus by site-directed mutagenesis, and the fitness of each mutant was compared with the ancestral type. A fitness of zero, less than one, one, more than one, respectively, indicates that mutations are lethal, deleterious, neutral, and advantageous. (from Mutation)
Image 9Rhagoletis pomonella, the hawthorn fly, appears to be in the process of sympatric speciation. (from Speciation)
Image 10This figure shows a simplified version of loss-of-function, switch-of-function, gain-of-function, and conservation-of-function mutations. (from Mutation)
Image 11Phyletic gradualism, above, consists of relatively slow change over geological time. Punctuated equilibrium, bottom, consists of morphological stability and rare, relatively rapid bursts of evolutionary change. (from Speciation)
Image 12Prodryas persephone, a Late Eocene butterfly (from Mutation)
Image 13Three major single-chromosome mutations: deletion (1), duplication (2) and inversion (3). (from Mutation)
Image 14Cichlids such as Haplochromis nyererei diversified by sympatric speciation in the Rift Valley lakes. (from Speciation)
Image 15Turing's 1952 paper explained mathematically how patterns such as stripes and spots, as in the giant pufferfish, may arise, without molecular evidence. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 16Gap genes in the fruit fly are switched on by genes such as bicoid, setting up stripes across the embryo which start to pattern the body's segments. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 17A covalent adduct between the metabolite of benzo[a]pyrene, the major mutagen in tobacco smoke, and DNA (from Mutation)
Image 18Expression of homeobox (Hox) genes in the fruit fly (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 19The structure of a eukaryotic protein-coding gene. A mutation in the protein coding region (red) can result in a change in the amino acid sequence. Mutations in other areas of the gene can have diverse effects. Changes within regulatory sequences (yellow and blue) can effect transcriptional and translational regulation of gene expression. (from Mutation)
Image 20A gene regulatory network (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 21Speciation via polyploidy: A diploid cell undergoes failed meiosis, producing diploid gametes, which self-fertilize to produce a tetraploid zygote. In plants, this can effectively be a new species, reproductively isolated from its parents, and able to reproduce. (from Speciation)
Image 22Types of small-scale mutations (from Mutation)
Image 23Male Drosophila pseudoobscura (from Speciation)
Image 24Comparison of allopatric, peripatric, parapatric and sympatric speciation (from Speciation)
Image 25A. Lancelet (a chordate), B. Larval tunicate, C. Adult tunicate. Kowalevsky saw that the notochord (1) and gill slits (5) are shared by tunicates and vertebrates. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 26The lac operon. Top: repressed. Bottom: active. (1) RNA Polymerase, (2) Repressor, (3) Promoter, (4) Operator, (5) Lactose, (6–8) protein-encoding genes, controlled by the switch, that cause lactose to be digested. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 27Selection of disease-causing mutations, in a standard table of the genetic code of amino acids (from Mutation)
Image 28Embryology theories of Ernst Haeckel, who argued for recapitulation of evolutionary development in the embryo, and Karl Ernst von Baer's epigenesis (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 29Among the centipedes, all members of the Geophilomorpha are constrained by a developmental bias to have an odd number of segments, whether as few as 27 or as many as 191. (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 30Five types of chromosomal mutations (from Mutation)
Image 31Gene product distributions along the long axis of the early embryo of a fruit fly (from Evolutionary developmental biology)
Image 32Reinforcement assists speciation by selecting against hybrids. (from Speciation)

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Credit: Commons:User:Thomas Ihle

Tarbosaurus at the Naturkundemuseum Münster in Münster, Germany.

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Did you know... - show different entries

... that despite the relative rarity of suitable conditions for fossilization, approximately 250,000 fossil species are known?
... that all forms of natural speciation have taken place over the course of evolution, though it still remains a subject of debate as to the relative importance of each mechanism in driving biodiversity?
... that genetic sequence evidence thus allows inference and quantification of genetic relatedness between humans and other apes?

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Improve: List of prehistoric mammals, List of extinct plants, Holocene extinction event
Stubs: Acritarch | Analogy (biology) | Evolutionary arms race | Genetic erosion | Hoyle's fallacy | Macromutation | Maladaptation | Evolutionary graph theory | Evolutionary landscape | Evolutionary taxonomy | Landrace | Law of Life (more...)
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A complete list of scientific WikiProjects can be found here. See also Wikispecies, a Wikimedia project dedicated to classification of biological species.

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