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• Lamarck: Populations change as individuals change in response to environment

• Darwin: Populations change as individuals experience different reproductive success (based on environment) = Natural Selection

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All living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction… Therefore I should infer… that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed

Darwin, 1859, pg. 484, “On the Origin of Species”

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Charles Darwin

• What were his two great contributions to biology?

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The Modern Synthesis (aka Neo-Darwinism)

• 1930’s• Math + genetics + natural selection

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WrightFisher

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J. B. S. Haldane

• Asked by theologians, what could be inferred about the mind of the Creator from the works of His Creation, he reportedly replied, "An inordinate fondness for beetles”.

• "My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Other Players in the Modern Synthesis

Ernst Mayr Allopatric speciation model

Animal speciation George Gaylord SimpsonFossils consistent with evolution

G. Ledyard StebbinsGenetics and plant speciation

From the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis

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• Dobzhansky, 1990-1975

• “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”

“Modern Synthesis” coined by Julian Huxley

= grandson of Thomas Henry

Huxley (Darwin’s bulldog)=brother of Aldous Huxley

The Evolving Synthesis?

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Modern Evolution

• What do we have now that Darwin didn’t?• Read Futuyma’s definition

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"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve.

Futuyma’s definition, part 1

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Biological evolution (or organic evolution) is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve.

Futuyma’s definition, part 2

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The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next.

Futuyma’s definition, part 3

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Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions.”--Futuyma, 1986

Futuyma’s definition, part 4

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• Assignment: Break down and shorten Futuyma’s definition

• At this point, we talked a bit about the evidence for common ancestry, but I have moved those slides to the Day 4 presentation...