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Evolutionary biology

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Evolutionary biology
Darwin's finches by John Gould
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Darwin's finches

Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, 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.

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.

Subfields

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See also: Outline of evolution § Subfields, and Outline of evolution § Applications in other disciplines

Evolution is the central unifying concept in biology. Biology can be divided into various ways. One way is by the level of biological organization, from molecular to cell, organism to population. Another way is by perceived taxonomic group, with fields such as zoology, botany, and microbiology, reflecting what was once seen as the major divisions of life. A third way is by approaches, such as field biology, theoretical biology, experimental evolution, and paleontology. These alternative ways of dividing up the subject have been combined with evolutionary biology to create subfields like evolutionary ecology and evolutionary developmental biology.

More recently, the merge between biological science and applied sciences gave birth to new fields that are extensions of evolutionary biology, including evolutionary robotics, engineering,[1] algorithms,[2] economics,[3] and architecture.[4] The basic mechanisms of evolution are applied directly or indirectly to come up with novel designs or solve problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. The research generated in these applied fields, contribute towards progress, especially from work on evolution in computer science and engineering fields such as mechanical engineering.[5]

In evolutionary developmental biology, scientists look at how the different processes in development play a role in how a specific organism reaches its current body plan. The genetic regulation of ontogeny and the phylogenetic process is what allows for this kind of understanding of biology. By looking at different processes during development, and going through the evolutionary tree, one can determine at which point a specific structure came about.[6][7]

History

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Main articles: History of evolutionary thought and Modern synthesis (20th century)

The idea of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, but evolutionary biology, as an academic discipline in its own right, emerged during the period of the modern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s.[8] It was not until the 1980s that many universities had departments of evolutionary biology.

Microbiology too is becoming an evolutionary discipline now that microbial physiology and genomics are better understood. The quick generation time of bacteria and viruses such as bacteriophages makes it possible to explore evolutionary questions.

Many biologists have contributed to shaping the modern discipline of evolutionary biology. Theodosius Dobzhansky and E. B. Ford established an empirical research programme. Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane created a sound theoretical framework. Ernst Mayr in systematics, George Gaylord Simpson in paleontology and G. Ledyard Stebbins in botany helped to form the modern synthesis. James Crow,[9] Richard Lewontin,[10] Dan Hartl,[11] Marcus Feldman,[12][13] and Brian Charlesworth[14] trained a generation of evolutionary biologists.

Research topics

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Research in evolutionary biology covers many topics and incorporates ideas from diverse areas, such as molecular genetics and computer science. Some fields of evolutionary research try to explain phenomena that were poorly accounted for in the modern evolutionary synthesis. These include speciation,[15][16] the evolution of sexual reproduction,[17][18] the evolution of cooperation, the evolution of ageing,[19] and evolvability.[20]

Some evolutionary biologists ask the most straightforward evolutionary question: "what happened and when?". This includes fields such as paleobiology, where paleobiologists and evolutionary biologists, including Thomas Halliday and Anjali Goswami, studied the evolution of early mammals going far back in time during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (between 299 million to 12,000 years ago).[21][22] Other fields related to generic exploration of evolution ("what happened and when?" ) include systematics and phylogenetics.

The modern evolutionary synthesis was devised at a time when the molecular basis of genes was unknown. Today, evolutionary biologists try to determine the genetic architecture underlying visible evolutionary phenomena such as adaptation and speciation. They seek answers to questions such as which genes are involved, how interdependent are the effects of different genes, what do the genes do, and what changes happen to them (e.g., point mutations vs. gene duplication or even genome duplication). They try to reconcile the high heritability seen in twin studies with the difficulty in finding which genes are responsible for this heritability using genome-wide association studies.[23] The modern evolutionary synthesis involved agreement about which forces contribute to evolution, but not about their relative importance.[24]

Journals

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Some scientific journals specialise exclusively in evolutionary biology as a whole, including the journals Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, and BMC Evolutionary Biology. Some journals cover sub-specialties within evolutionary biology, such as the journals Systematic Biology, Molecular Biology and Evolution and its sister journal Genome Biology and Evolution, and Cladistics.

Other journals combine aspects of evolutionary biology with other related fields. For example, Molecular Ecology, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B, The American Naturalist and Theoretical Population Biology have overlap with ecology and other aspects of organismal biology. Overlap with ecology is also prominent in the review journals Trends in Ecology and Evolution and Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. The journals Genetics and PLoS Genetics overlap with molecular genetics questions that are not obviously evolutionary in nature.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Evolutionary engineering". Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, Department of Applied Life Sciences, Lab. Extremophiles. Archived from the original on 16 December 2016.
  2. ^ "What is an Evolutionary Algorithm?" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 August 2017.
  3. ^ "What economists can learn from evolutionary theorists". Archived from the original on 30 July 2017.
  4. ^ "Investigating architecture and design". IBM. 24 February 2009. Archived from the original on 18 August 2017.
  5. ^ Introduction to Evolutionary Computing: A.E. Eiben. Natural Computing Series. Springer. 2003. ISBN 9783642072857. Archived from the original on 1 September 2017.
  6. ^ Ozernyuk, N.D. (2019) "Evolutionary Developmental Biology: the Interaction of Developmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Paleontology, and Genomics". Paleontological Journal, Vol. 53, No. 11, pp. 1117–1133. ISSN 0031-0301.
  7. ^ Gilbert, Scott F., Barresi, Michael J.F.(2016). "Developmental Biology" Sinauer Associates, inc.(11th ed.) pp. 785–810. ISBN 9781605354705.
  8. ^ Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty (1996). "Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology". Journal of the History of Biology. 25 (1). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1–65. doi:10.1007/BF01947504. ISBN 0-691-03343-9. PMID 11623198. S2CID 189833728.
  9. ^ "The Academic Genealogy of Evolutionary Biology: James F. Crow". Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
  10. ^ "The Academic Genealogy of Evolutionary Biology:Richard Lewontin". Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
  11. ^ "The Academic Genealogy of Evolutionary Biology: Daniel Hartl". Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
  12. ^ "Feldman lab alumni & collaborators". Archived from the original on 7 March 2023.
  13. ^ "The Academic Genealogy of Evolutionary Biology: Marcus Feldman". Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
  14. ^ "The Academic Genealogy of Evolutionary Biology: Brian Charlesworth". Archived from the original on 14 May 2012.
  15. ^ Wiens, J.J. (2004). "What is speciation and how should we study it?". American Naturalist. 163 (6): 914–923. doi:10.1086/386552. JSTOR 10.1086/386552. PMID 15266388. S2CID 15042207.
  16. ^ Bernstein, H. et al. Sex and the emergence of species. J Theor Biol. 1985 Dec 21;117(4):665-90. doi: 10.1016/s0022-5193(85)80246-0. PMID 4094459.
  17. ^ Otto SP (2009). "The evolutionary enigma of sex". American Naturalist. 174 (s1): S1–S14. doi:10.1086/599084. PMID 19441962. S2CID 9250680.
  18. ^ Bernstein, H. et al. Genetic damage, mutation, and the evolution of sex. Science. 1985 Sep 20;229(4719):1277-81. doi: 10.1126/science.3898363. PMID 3898363.
  19. ^ Avise, J.C. Perspective: The evolutionary biology of aging, sexual reproduction, and DNA repair. Evolution. 1993 Oct;47(5):1293–1301. doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1993.tb02155.x. PMID 28564887.
  20. ^ Hendrikse, Jesse Love; Parsons, Trish Elizabeth; Hallgrímsson, Benedikt (2007). "Evolvability as the proper focus of evolutionary developmental biology". Evolution & Development. 9 (4): 393–401. doi:10.1111/j.1525-142X.2007.00176.x. PMID 17651363. S2CID 31540737.
  21. ^ Halliday, Thomas (29 June 2016). "Eutherians experienced elevated evolutionary rates in the immediate aftermath of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 283 (1833). doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.3026. PMC 4936024. PMID 27358361. S2CID 4920075.
  22. ^ Halliday, Thomas (28 March 2016). "Eutherian morphological disparity across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 118 (1): 152–168. doi:10.1111/bij.12731.
  23. ^ Manolio, T.A.; et al. (2009). "Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases". Nature. 461 (7265): 747–753. Bibcode:2009Natur.461..747M. doi:10.1038/nature08494. PMC 2831613. PMID 19812666.
  24. ^ Provine, W.B. (1988). "Progress in evolution and meaning in life". Evolutionary progress. University of Chicago Press. pp. 49–79.
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