3.2: Evolution - Mechanisms and Evidence
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This page is a draft and under active development. Please forward any questions, comments, and/or feedback to the ASCCC OERI (oeri@asccc.org).
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- Describe how the present-day theory of evolution was developed.
- Explain natural selection and its role in evolution.
- Explain convergent and divergent evolution.
- Describe homologous and vestigial structures.
- Discuss misconceptions about the theory of evolution.
- Explain the categories of evidence for evolution.
- Describe species and speciation.
- Explain kin selection, inclusive fitness, and the evolution of altruistic behaviors such as helping, cooperation, and giving.
Overview
The theory of evolution is the unifying theory of biology, meaning it is the framework within which biologists ask questions about the living world. Its power is that it provides direction for predictions about living things that are borne out in experiment after experiment. Recall the claim by geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, quoted in Section 3.1, that “nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution." He meant that the tenet that all life has evolved and diversified from a common ancestor is the foundation from which we approach all questions in biology. It is important to keep this claim in mind when we think about brain evolution and psychology. The evolutionary links among animal species help explain the similarities in their brains and behavior.
Summary of Key Points:
- Evolution: All species of living organisms, from bacteria to baboons to blueberries, evolved at some point from a different species. Although it may seem that living things today stay much the same, that is not the case—evolution is an ongoing process.
- Understanding Evolution: Evolution by natural selection describes a mechanism for how species change over time. That species change had been suggested and debated well before Darwin began to explore this idea. The view that species were static and unchanging was grounded in the writings of Plato, yet there were also ancient Greeks who expressed evolutionary ideas. Darwin was the first to describe the primary mechanism of evolutionary change--natural selection.
- When Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, the mechanisms of inheritance were unknown. Now, we know a great deal about those mechanisms. Here are some key definitions. Chromosomes are long strings of genes made of the molecule, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). A gene is a segment of a chromosome coding for synthesis of a specific protein. Alleles are alternative forms of a gene at the same location on the chromosome (for example a blue gene for eye color and a brown gene for eye color are alleles). Genotype is the genetic makeup of an individual. Phenotype is the actual anatomical, physiological, and behavioral/psychological characteristics of an individual.
Understanding Evolution
Darwin's evolution by natural selection describes a mechanism for how species change over time. Darwin described evolution as "descent with modification."
In the eighteenth century, James Hutton, a Scottish naturalist, proposed that geological change occurred gradually by the accumulation of small changes from processes operating like they are today over long periods of time. This contrasted with the predominant view that the geology of the planet was a consequence of catastrophic events occurring during a relatively brief past. Hutton’s view was popularized in the nineteenth century by the geologist Charles Lyell who became a friend to Darwin. Lyell’s ideas were influential on Darwin’s thinking: Lyell’s notion of the greater age of Earth gave more time for gradual change in species, and the process of change provided an analogy for gradual change in species. In the early nineteenth century, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published a book that detailed a mechanism for evolutionary change. This mechanism is now referred to as an inheritance of acquired characteristics by which modifications in an individual that are caused by its environment, or the use or disuse of a structure during its lifetime, could be inherited by its offspring and thus bring about change in a species. A simple example or two will illustrate why this is wrong--the idea suggests that if you go to the gym and get buff, then you will have buff kids, or if you lose a finger in an accident, that you will have children missing a finger, and that such changes will eventually become characteristics of the species. Today we know that if the change in characteristics does not change genes, the change cannot be passed on to future generations. While this mechanism for evolutionary change was discredited, Lamarck’s ideas were an important influence on evolutionary thought.
Charles Darwin and Natural Selection
In the mid-nineteenth century, the actual mechanism for evolution was independently conceived of and described by two naturalists: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Importantly, each naturalist spent time exploring the natural world on expeditions to the tropics. From 1831 to 1836, Darwin traveled around the world on H.M.S. Beagle, including stops in South America, Australia, and the southern tip of Africa. Wallace traveled to Brazil to collect insects in the Amazon rainforest from 1848 to 1852 and to the Malay Archipelago from 1854 to 1862. Darwin’s journey, like Wallace’s later journeys to the Malay Archipelago, included stops at several island chains, the last being the Galápagos Islands, west of Ecuador. On these islands, Darwin observed species of organisms on different islands that were clearly similar, yet had distinct differences. For example, the ground finches inhabiting the Galápagos Islands comprised several species with a unique beak shape. The species on the islands had a graded series of beak sizes and shapes with very small differences between the most similar. He observed that these finches closely resembled another finch species on the mainland of South America. Darwin imagined that the island species might be species modified from one of the original mainland species. Upon further study, he realized that the varied beaks of each finch helped the birds acquire a specific type of food. For example, seed-eating finches had stronger, thicker beaks for breaking seeds, and insect-eating finches had spear-like beaks for stabbing their prey.
Wallace and Darwin both observed similar patterns in other organisms and they independently developed the same explanation for how and why such changes could take place. Darwin called this mechanism natural selection. Natural selection, also known as “survival of the fittest,” is more accurately described as survival and reproduction of the fittest. Survival alone is insufficient. Evolution involves differential rates of reproduction. Survival alone without reproduction has no effect on the genetic evolution of a species. Natural selection results in the more prolific reproduction of individuals with traits that contribute to survival and reproduction in a changing environment; this increased rate of reproduction in individuals with traits better fit to the environment compared to individuals with traits less fit leads to evolutionary change.
For example, a population of giant tortoises found in the Galapagos Archipelago was observed by Darwin to have longer necks than those that lived on other islands with dry lowlands. These tortoises were “selected” because they could reach more leaves and access more food than those with short necks. In times of drought when fewer leaves would be available, those that could reach more leaves had a better chance to eat and survive than those that couldn’t reach the food source. Consequently, long-necked tortoises would be more likely to be reproductively successful and pass the long-necked trait to their offspring. Over time, only long-necked tortoises would be present in the population, as short-necked animals failed to survive and reproduce.
Natural selection, Darwin argued, was an inevitable outcome of three principles that operated in nature.
First, most characteristics of organisms are inherited, or passed from parent to offspring. Although no one, including Darwin and Wallace, knew how this happened at the time, it was a common understanding.
Second, more offspring are produced than are able to survive, so resources for survival and reproduction are limited. The capacity for reproduction in all organisms outstrips the availability of resources to support their numbers. Thus, there is competition for those resources in each generation. Both Darwin and Wallace’s understanding of this principle came from reading an essay by the economist Thomas Malthus who discussed this principle in relation to human populations.
Third, offspring vary among each other in regard to their characteristics and those variations are inherited. Darwin and Wallace reasoned that offspring with inherited characteristics which allow them to best compete for limited resources will survive and have more offspring than those individuals with variations that are less able to compete. Because characteristics are inherited, these traits will be better represented in the next generation. This will lead to change in populations over generations in a process that Darwin called descent with modification. Ultimately, natural selection leads to greater adaptation of the population to its local environment; it is the only mechanism known for adaptive evolution.
Papers by Darwin and Wallace presenting the idea of natural selection were read together in 1858 before the Linnean Society in London. The following year Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, was published. His book outlined in considerable detail his arguments for evolution by natural selection.
Demonstrations of evolution by natural selection are time consuming and difficult to obtain. As briefly discussed in Module 3.1, one of the best examples has been demonstrated in the very birds that helped to inspire Darwin’s theory: the Galápagos finches. Peter and Rosemary Grant and their colleagues have studied Galápagos finch populations every year since 1976 and have provided important demonstrations of natural selection. The Grants found changes from one generation to the next in the distribution of beak shapes in the medium ground finch on the Galápagos island of Daphne Major. The birds have inherited variation in the bill shape with some birds having wide deep bills and others having thinner bills. During a period in which rainfall was higher than normal because of an El Niño (an unusual warming of the Pacific Ocean near the West coast of the Americas), the large hard seeds that large-billed birds ate were reduced in number; however, there was an abundance of the small soft seeds which the small-billed birds ate. Therefore, survival and reproduction were much better in the following years for the small-billed birds. In the years following this El Niño, the Grants measured beak sizes in the population and found that the average bill size was smaller. Since bill size is an inherited trait, parents with smaller bills had more offspring and the size of bills had evolved to be smaller. As conditions changed and a long period of drought ensued, larger seeds became more available. The trend toward smaller average bill size ceased and selection for larger beaks and body size resulted in a lasting increase in beak size.
As discussed in Section 3.1, another well known example of observable evolution is the peppered moth. Because of its importance as another example of natural selection in action, we review the details here. Prior to industrialization in England, the peppered moth had light colored wings that closely matched the color of the bark of the trees. This inherited trait provided camouflage for the moths helping to protect them from predator birds. Although most of the moths had light colored wings, a few each generation had darker wings, but without sufficient camouflage these darker colored moths had been easy prey and survived and reproduced with low frequency. As industrialization came to England, soot from factories began to slowly turn the bark of trees darker and darker. As this occurred, darker wings were now an advantage, helping to hide the darker moths from predators when they landed on trees, increasing their survival and reproductive rates over the lighter colored moths. As natural selection continued over decades, the light colored moths, once the predominant form, were increasingly replaced over generations by darker winged variants, until today, after no more than a hundred years of evolution, the peppered moth has dark wings (although as mentioned in Module 3.1 with cleaner air, numbers of the lighter variant are increasing as the tree bark continues to lighten). This transformation of the species as a consequence of natural selection, as the environment changed, is a good example of evolution rapid enough that it can be observed.
Process and Pattern of Evolution
Natural selection can only take place if there is variation, or differences, among individuals in a population. Importantly, these differences must have some genetic basis; otherwise, the selection will not lead to change in the next generation. This is critical because variation among individuals can be caused by non-genetic reasons, such as an individual being taller because of better nutrition rather than different genes.
Genetic diversity in a population comes from two main mechanisms: mutation and sexual reproduction. Mutation, a change in DNA, is the ultimate source of new alleles (alternative forms of a gene located at the same place on a chromosome), or new genetic variation in any population. The genetic changes caused by mutation can have one of three outcomes on the phenotype. A mutation affects the phenotype of the organism in a way that gives it reduced fitness—lower likelihood of survival or fewer offspring. A mutation may produce a phenotype with a beneficial effect on fitness. And, many mutations will also have no effect on the fitness of the phenotype; these are called neutral mutations. Mutations may also have a whole range of effect sizes on the fitness of the organism that expresses them in their phenotype, from a small effect to a great effect. Sexual reproduction also leads to genetic diversity: when two parents reproduce, unique combinations of alleles assemble to produce the unique genotypes and thus phenotypes in each of the offspring.
A heritable trait that helps the survival and reproduction of an organism in its present environment is called an adaptation. Scientists describe groups of organisms becoming adapted to their environment when a change in the range of genetic variation occurs over time that increases or maintains the “fit” of the population to its environment. The webbed feet of platypuses are an adaptation for swimming. The snow leopards’ thick fur is an adaptation for living in the cold. The cheetahs’ fast speed is an adaptation for catching prey.
Whether or not a trait is favorable depends on the environmental conditions at the time. The same traits are not always selected because environmental conditions can change. For example, consider a species of plant that grew in a moist climate and did not need to conserve water. Large leaves were selected because they allowed the plant to obtain more energy from the sun. Large leaves require more water to maintain than small leaves, and the moist environment provided favorable conditions to support large leaves. After thousands of years, the climate changed, and the area no longer had excess water. The direction of natural selection shifted so that plants with small leaves were selected because those populations were able to conserve water to survive the new environmental conditions.
Formation of New Species: Although all life on earth shares various genetic similarities, only certain organisms combine genetic information by sexual reproduction and have offspring that can then successfully reproduce. Scientists call such organisms members of the same biological species. For example, a mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse. However, since the mule cannot reproduce (donkey and horse do not have the same number of chromosomes), donkeys and horses are considered separate species. However, a cross between a Dachshund and a Norwegian Elkhound can result in offspring that can reproduce with another domestic dog, and thus all domestic dogs are considered the same species (all have the same number of chromosomes). Speciation (the formation of new species) occurs over a span of evolutionary time, so when a new species arises, there is a transition period during which the closely related species continue to interact.
The evolution of species has resulted in enormous variation in form and function. Sometimes, evolution gives rise to groups of organisms that become tremendously different from each other. When two species evolve in diverse directions from a common point, it is called divergent evolution. Such divergent evolution can be seen in the forms of the reproductive organs of flowering plants which share the same basic anatomies; however, they can look very different as a result of selection in different physical environments and adaptation to different kinds of pollinators. As you will see in the section on human evolution, human and apes lines diverged from one another millions of years ago, yet evidence of a common ancestry comes from many sources, including similarities in DNA.
In other cases, similar phenotypes evolve independently in distantly related species. For example, flight has evolved in both bats and insects, and they both have structures we refer to as wings, which are adaptations to flight. However, the wings of bats and insects have evolved from very different original structures. This phenomenon is called convergent evolution, where similar traits evolve independently in species that do not share a recent common ancestry. The two species came to the same function, flying, but did so separately from each other.
Natural Selection and Adaptive Evolution
Natural selection only acts on the population’s heritable traits: selecting for beneficial alleles and thus increasing their frequency in the population, while selecting against deleterious alleles and thereby decreasing their frequency—a process known as adaptive evolution. Natural selection does not act on individual alleles, however, but on entire organisms. An individual may carry a very beneficial genotype with a resulting phenotype that, for example, increases the ability to reproduce (fecundity), but if that same individual also carries an allele that results in a fatal childhood disease, that fecundity phenotype will not be passed on to the next generation because the individual will not live to reach reproductive age. Natural selection acts at the level of the individual; it selects for individuals with greater contributions to the gene pool of the next generation, known as an organism’s evolutionary (Darwinian) fitness.
Fitness is often quantifiable and is measured by scientists in the field. However, it is not the absolute fitness of an individual that counts, but rather how it compares to the other organisms in the population. This concept, called relative fitness, allows researchers to determine which individuals are contributing additional offspring to the next generation, and thus, how the population might evolve.
Evidence of Evolution
The evidence for evolution is compelling and extensive. Looking at every level of organization in living systems, biologists see the signature of past and present evolution. Darwin dedicated a large portion of his book, On the Origin of Species, to identifying patterns in nature that were consistent with evolution, and since Darwin, our understanding has become clearer and broader.
Fossils
Fossils provide solid evidence that organisms from the past are not the same as those found today, and fossils show a progression of evolution. Scientists determine the age of fossils and categorize them from all over the world to determine when the organisms lived relative to each other. The resulting fossil record tells the story of the past and shows the evolution of form over millions of years. For example, scientists have recovered highly detailed records showing the evolution of humans and horses.
Anatomy and Embryology
Another type of evidence for evolution is the presence of structures in organisms that share the same basic form. For example, the bones in the appendages of a human, dog, bird, and whale all share the same overall construction (Figure 18.1.618.1.6) resulting from their origin in the appendages of a common ancestor. Over time, evolution led to changes in the shapes and sizes of these bones in different species, but they have maintained the same overall layout. Scientists call these synonymous parts homologous structures.
Some structures exist in organisms that have no apparent function at all, and appear to be residual parts from a past common ancestor. These unused structures without function are called vestigial structures. Examples of vestigial structures are wings on flightless birds, leaves on some cacti, and hind leg bones in whales.
Visit this interactive site to guess which bones structures are homologous and which are analogous, and see examples of evolutionary adaptations to illustrate these concepts.
Another evidence of evolution is the convergence of form in organisms that share similar environments. For example, species of unrelated animals, such as the arctic fox and ptarmigan, living in the arctic region have been selected for seasonal white phenotypes during winter to blend with the snow and ice. These similarities occur not because of common ancestry, but because of similar selection pressures—the benefits of not being seen, by prey or by predators, respectively.
Embryology, the study of the development of the anatomy of an organism to its adult form, also provides evidence of relatedness between now widely divergent groups of organisms. Mutational tweaking in the embryo can have such magnified consequences in the adult that embryo formation tends to be conserved. As a result, structures that are absent in some groups often appear in their embryonic forms and disappear by the time the adult or juvenile form is reached. For example, all vertebrate embryos, including humans, exhibit gill slits and tails at some point in their early development. These disappear in the adults of terrestrial groups but are maintained in adult forms of aquatic groups such as fish and some amphibians. Great ape embryos, including humans, have a tail structure during their development that is lost by the time of (their) birth.
Biogeography
The geographic distribution of organisms on the planet follows patterns that are best explained by evolution in conjunction with the movement of tectonic plates over geological time. Broad groups that evolved before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea (about 200 million years ago) are distributed worldwide. Groups that evolved since the breakup appear uniquely in regions of the planet, such as the unique flora and fauna of northern continents that formed from the supercontinent Laurasia and of the southern continents that formed from the supercontinent Gondwana. The presence of members of the plant family Proteaceae in Australia, southern Africa, and South America is best explained by their presence prior to the southern supercontinent Gondwana breaking up.
The great diversification of marsupials in Australia and the absence of other mammals reflect Australia’s long isolation. Australia has an abundance of endemic species—species found nowhere else—which is typical of islands whose isolation by expanses of water prevents species to migrate. Over time, these species diverge evolutionarily into new species that look very different from their ancestors that may exist on the mainland. The marsupials of Australia, the finches on the Galápagos, and many species on the Hawaiian Islands are all unique to their one point of origin, yet they display distant relationships to ancestral species on mainlands.
Molecular Biology
Like anatomical structures, the structures of the molecules of life reflect Darwin's "descent with modification" (i.e. evolution). Evidence of a common ancestor for all of life is reflected in the universality of DNA as the genetic material and in the near universality of the genetic code and the machinery of DNA replication and expression. Fundamental divisions in life between the three domains (archaea--single celled organisms without a cell nucleus; bacteria; and eukaryote--including plants, animals, and fungi) are reflected in major structural differences in otherwise conservative structures such as the components of ribosomes and the structures of membranes. In general, the relatedness of groups of organisms is reflected in the similarity of their DNA sequences—exactly the pattern that would be expected from descent and diversification from a common ancestor.
DNA sequences have also shed light on some of the mechanisms of evolution. For example, it is clear that the evolution of new functions for proteins commonly occurs after gene duplication events that allow the free modification of one copy by mutation, selection, or drift (changes in a population’s gene pool resulting from chance), while the second copy continues to produce a functional protein.
Misconceptions About Evolution
Although the theory of evolution generated some controversy when it was first proposed, it was almost universally accepted by biologists, particularly younger biologists, within 20 years after publication of On the Origin of Species. Nevertheless, the theory of evolution is a difficult concept and misconceptions about how it works abound.
This site addresses some of the main misconceptions associated with the theory of evolution.
Evolution Is Just a Theory
Critics of the theory of evolution dismiss its importance by purposefully confounding the everyday usage of the word “theory” with the way scientists use the word. In science, a “theory” is understood to be a body of thoroughly tested and verified explanations for a set of observations of the natural world. Scientists have a theory of the atom, a theory of gravity, and the theory of relativity, each of which describes understood facts about the world. In the same way, the theory of evolution describes facts about the living world. As such, a theory in science has survived significant efforts to discredit it by scientists. In contrast, a “theory” in common vernacular is a word meaning a guess or suggested explanation; this meaning is more akin to the scientific concept of “hypothesis.” When critics of evolution say evolution is “just a theory,” they are implying that there is little evidence supporting it and that it is still in the process of being rigorously tested. This is a mischaracterization.
Individuals Evolve
Evolution is the change in genetic composition of a population over time, specifically over generations, resulting from differential reproduction of individuals with certain alleles. Individuals do change over their lifetime, obviously, but this is called development and involves changes programmed by the set of genes the individual acquired at birth in coordination with the individual’s environment. When thinking about the evolution of a characteristic, it is probably best to think about the change of the average value of the characteristic in the population over time. For example, when natural selection leads to bill-size change in medium-ground finches in the Galápagos, this does not mean that individual bills on the finches are changing. If one measures the average bill size among all individuals in the population at one time and then measures the average bill size in the population several years later, this average value will be different as a result of evolution. Although some individuals may survive from the first time to the second, they will still have the same bill size; however, there will be many new individuals that contribute to the shift in average bill size.
Evolution Explains the Origin of Life
It is a common misunderstanding that evolution includes an explanation of life’s origins. Conversely, some of the theory’s critics believe that it cannot explain the origin of life. The theory does not try to explain the origin of life. The theory of evolution explains how populations change over time and how life diversifies the origin of species. It does not shed light on the beginnings of life including the origins of the first cells, which is how life is defined. The mechanisms of the origin of life on Earth are a particularly difficult problem because it occurred a very long time ago, and presumably it just occurred once. Importantly, biologists believe that the presence of life on Earth precludes the possibility that the events that led to life on Earth can be repeated because the intermediate stages would immediately become food for existing living things.
However, once a mechanism of inheritance was in place in the form of a molecule like DNA, either within a cell or pre-cell, these entities would be subject to the principle of natural selection. More effective reproducers would increase in frequency at the expense of inefficient reproducers. So while evolution does not explain the origin of life, it may have something to say about some of the processes operating once pre-living entities acquired certain properties.
Organisms Evolve on Purpose
Statements such as “organisms evolve in response to a change in an environment” are quite common, but such statements can lead to two types of misunderstandings. First, the statement must not be understood to mean that individual organisms evolve. The statement is shorthand for “a population evolves in response to a changing environment.” However, a second misunderstanding may arise by interpreting the statement to mean that the evolution is somehow intentional. A changed environment results in some individuals in the population, those with particular phenotypes, benefiting and therefore producing proportionately more offspring than other phenotypes. This results in change in the population, if the characteristics are genetically determined.
It is also important to understand that the variation that natural selection works on is already in a population and does not arise in response to an environmental change. For example, applying antibiotics to a population of bacteria will, over time, select a population of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. The resistance, which is caused by a gene, did not arise by mutation because of the application of the antibiotic. The gene for resistance was already present in the gene pool of the bacteria, likely at a low frequency. The antibiotic, which kills the bacterial cells without the resistance gene, strongly selects individuals that are resistant, since these would be the only ones that survived and divided. Experiments have demonstrated that mutations for antibiotic resistance do not arise as a result of antibiotic.
In a larger sense, evolution is not goal directed. Species do not become “better” over time; they simply track their changing environment with adaptations that maximize their reproduction in a particular environment at a particular time. Evolution has no goal of making faster, bigger, more complex, or even smarter species, despite the commonness of this kind of language in popular discourse. What characteristics evolve in a species are a function of the variation present and the environment, both of which are constantly changing in a non-directional way. What trait is fit in one environment at one time may well be fatal at some point in the future. This holds equally well for a species of insect as it does the human species.
Population Evolution and the Modern Synthesis
The mechanisms of inheritance, or genetics, were not understood at the time Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were developing their idea of natural selection. This lack of understanding was a stumbling block to understanding many aspects of evolution. In fact, the predominant (and incorrect) genetic theory of the time, blending inheritance, made it difficult to understand how natural selection might operate. Darwin and Wallace were unaware of the genetics work by Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, which was published in 1866, not long after publication of Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species (1859). Mendel’s work was rediscovered in the early twentieth century at which time geneticists were rapidly coming to an understanding of the basics of inheritance. Initially, the newly discovered particulate nature of genes made it difficult for biologists to understand how gradual evolution could occur. But over the next few decades, genetics and evolution were integrated in what became known as the modern synthesis—the coherent understanding of the relationship between natural selection and genetics that took shape by the 1940s and is generally accepted today. In sum, the modern synthesis describes how evolutionary processes, such as natural selection, can affect a population’s genetic makeup, and, in turn, how this can result in the gradual evolution of populations and species. The theory also connects this change of a population over time, called microevolution, with the processes of macroevolution that gave rise to new species and higher taxonomic groups with widely divergent characters.
Kin Selection
In the discussion of natural selection, the emphasis was on how natural selection works on individuals to favor the more fit and disfavor the less fit in a population. The emphasis was on the survival (mortality selection), mating success (sexual selection), or family size (fecundity selection) of individuals. But what of the worker honeybee who gives up her life when danger threatens her hive? Or the mother bird who, feigning injury, flutters away from her nestful of young, thus risking death at the hands of a predator? How can evolution produce genes for such instinctive patterns of behavior when the owner of these genes risk failing the first test of fitness: survival?
A possible solution to this dilemma lies in the effect of such seemingly altruistic behavior on the overall ("inclusive") fitness of the family of the altruistic individual. Linked together by a similar genetic endowment, the altruistic member of the family enhances the chance that many of its own genes will be passed on to future generations by sacrificing itself for the welfare of its relatives. It is interesting to note that most altruistic behavior is observed where the individuals are linked by fairly close family ties. Natural selection working at the level of the family rather than the individual is called kin selection.
How good is the evidence for kin selection? Does the behavior of the mother bird really increase her chances of being killed? After all, it may be advantageous to take the initiative in an encounter with a predator that wanders near. But even if she does increase her risk, is this anything more than another example of maternal behavior? Her children are, indeed, her kin. But isn't natural selection simply operating in one of the ways Darwin described: to produce larger mature families?
Perhaps clearer examples of altruism and kin selection are to be found in those species of birds that employ "helpers". One example: Florida scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens coerulescens). These birds occupy well-defined territories. When they reach maturity, many of the young birds remain for a time (one to four years) in the territory and help their parents with the raising of additional broods. How self-sacrificing! Should not natural selection have produced a genotype that leads its owners to seek mates and start raising their own families (to receive those genes)?
But the idea of kin selection suggests that the genes guiding their seemingly altruistic behavior have been selected for because they are more likely to be passed on to subsequent generations in the bodies of an increased number of younger brothers and sisters than in the bodies of their own children. To demonstrate that this is so, it is necessary to show that:
- the "helping" behavior of these unmated birds is really a help and that
- they have truly sacrificed opportunities to be successful parents themselves.
Thanks to the patient observations of Glen Woolfenden, the first point is established. He has shown that parents with helpers raise larger broods than those without. But the second point remains unresolved. Perhaps by waiting until they have gained experience with guarding nests and feeding young and until a suitable territory becomes available, these seemingly altruistic helpers are actually improving their chances of eventually raising larger families than they would have if they started right at it. If so, then once again we are simply seeing natural selection working through one of Darwin's criteria of individual fitness: ability to produce larger mature families.
The evolutionary advantage of helping ceases if the young are not actually siblings of the helper. It is well-established (e.g., by DNA analysis) that the females of many species of birds have "extramarital" affairs; that is, produce broods where the young have been sired by more than one male. Interestingly, it turns out that the more promiscuous the females of a given species, the less likely it is that they are assisted by helpers. Conversely, those species that employ helpers tend to be monogamous (however, there are a few exceptions.)
Kin Selection in Social Insects
The honeybee and other social insects provide the clearest example of kin selection. They are also particularly interesting examples because of the peculiar genetic relationships among the family members.
Male honeybees (drones) develop from the queen's unfertilized eggs and are haploid. Thus, all their sperm will contain exactly the same set of genes. This means that all their daughters will share exactly the same set of paternal genes, although they will share — on average — only one-half of their mother's genes. (Human sisters, in contrast, share one-half of their father's as well as one-half of their mother's genes.) So any behavior that favors honeybee sisters (75% of genes shared) will be more favorable to their genotype than behavior that favors their children (50% of genes shared).
Since that is the case, why bother with children at all? Why not have most of the sisters be sterile workers, caring for their mother as she produces more and more younger sisters, a few of whom will someday be queens? As for their brothers, worker bees share only 25% of their genes with them. Is it surprising, then, that as autumn draws near, the workers lose patience with the lazy demanding ways of their brothers and finally drive them from the hive?
No Perfect Organism
Natural selection is a driving force in evolution and can generate populations that are better adapted to survive and successfully reproduce in their environments. But natural selection cannot produce the perfect organism. Natural selection can only select on existing variation in the population; it does not create anything from scratch. Thus, it is limited by a population’s existing genetic variance and whatever new alleles (genetic variants) arise through mutation and gene flow (when some organisms from one population migrate into another population).
Natural selection is also limited because it works at the level of individuals, not alleles, and some alleles are linked together due to their physical proximity in the genome, making them more likely to be passed on together (linkage disequilibrium). Any given individual may carry some beneficial alleles and some unfavorable alleles. It is the net effect of these alleles, or the organism’s fitness, upon which natural selection can act. As a result, good alleles can be lost if they are carried by individuals that also have several overwhelmingly bad alleles; likewise, bad alleles can be kept if they are carried by individuals that have enough good alleles to result in an overall fitness benefit.
Finally, it is important to understand that not all evolution is adaptive. While natural selection selects the fittest individuals and often results in a more fit population overall, other forces of evolution, including genetic drift and gene flow, often do the opposite: introducing deleterious alleles to the population’s gene pool. Evolution has no purpose—it is not changing a population into a preconceived ideal. It is simply the sum of the various forces described in this chapter and how they influence the genetic and phenotypic variance of a population.
Summary
Evolution is the process of adaptation through mutation and natural selection which allows better biologically fit (i.e. better adapted) characteristics to be passed to succeeding generations while less well adapted characteristics tend to be weeded out. Over time, organisms evolve characteristics that are beneficial to their survival and reproduction. For living organisms to adapt and change to environmental pressures, genetic variation must be present. With genetic variation, individuals have differences in form and function that allow some to survive environmental conditions better than others. These organisms pass their favorable traits to their offspring. Eventually, environments change, and what was once a desirable, advantageous trait may become an undesirable trait and organisms may further evolve. Evolution may be convergent with similar traits evolving in multiple species or divergent with diverse traits evolving in multiple species that came from a common ancestor. Evidence of evolution can be observed by means of DNA code and the fossil record, and also by the existence of homologous and vestigial structures.
The modern synthesis of evolutionary theory grew out of the combination of Darwin’s and Wallace’s formulations of evolution with Mendel’s analysis of heredity, along with the more modern study of population genetics. The modern synthesis describes the evolution of populations and species, from small-scale changes among individuals to large-scale changes over paleontological time periods. To understand how organisms evolve, scientists can track populations’ allele frequencies over time.
Kin selection and inclusive fitness involve selection for altruistic behaviors which benefit close genetic relatives.
References
- Theodosius Dobzhansky. “Biology, Molecular and Organismic.” American Zoologist 4, no. 4 (1964): 449.
Attributions
- Evolution: Mechanisms and Evidence adapted from Evolution and Origin of Species OpenStax, licensed CC BY 4.0
- Kin Selection and Kin Selection in Insects adapted from Libretexts, Biology written by John W. Kimball. This content is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license and made possible by funding from The Saylor Foundation.