Activity 4: Born to Run

1. What is the name of your hypothetical organism?

2. What makes it an excellent runner?
3. What do you think its common ancestor?
4. Before it became an excellent runner, what does it look like?

Excellent Runner
How Life on Earth began?

• Creationism
• Abiogenesis
Classical times ( 800 BC- 600 AD )
Essentialism
“ All species on earth were unchangeable “

If the creation of God were perfectly

crafted, why then would God fix or
changed it?
1700s when concept of Evolution was raised

Now, Evolutionary school of thought

Lesson 2:Development of
Evolutionary Thought
Lamarck’s Theory of Adaptation

One of the first proponents of the idea of

evolution

French scientist, Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (

1944- 1829 )
Theory of Acquired Characteristics

“ if an animal could develop a

particular characteristics in its
lifetime, then this trait could be
passed on to their offspring and its
succeeding generation “

The physical desire of an animal

determines how the body will develop
into something, and that changes in
organ size caused by its use or disuse
can be inherited by offspring
What feature of the environment enabled the development of long neck in giraffes
according to Lamarck’s theory ?

Lamarck’s idea lacked evidence at that time. What do you think it was? Why do you
think this evidence was missing?
Charles Darwin and Natural Selection( 1809-1882)

“ if an organism developed and possessed a

small inherited variation that would increase
the individual’s ability to compete, survive
and reproduce, then this characteristics will
be passed on to the next generation. The rest
of the organisms that did not have the trait
will not survive. Therefore, through time,
species become gradually adapted to the
environment, leading to the evolution of new
species “
Natural Selection
individuals with certain traits are more likely to survive and
reproduce than are individuals who do not have those traits

He hypothesized that as descendants of ancestral populations

spread into various habitats over millions and millions of years, they
accumulated diverse modification or adaptations, that fit them to
specific ways of life in their environment
There is variation in traits.
For example, some beetles are green and some are brown.

There is differential reproduction.

Since the environment can't support unlimited population
growth, not all individuals get to reproduce to their full
potential. In this example, green beetles tend to get eaten by
birds and survive to reproduce less often than brown beetles
do.

There is heredity.
The surviving brown beetles have brown baby beetles because
this trait has a genetic basis.

End result:
The more advantageous trait, brown coloration, which allows
the beetle to have more offspring, becomes more common in
the population. If this process continues, eventually, all
individuals in the population will be brown.
1859, the book was published
Alfred Russel Wallace : The father of
Biogeography

Expedition in the Amazon and Southeast Asian region

He wanted to demonstrate that evolution took place by showing

how geography influenced the current distribution of species

He found a pattern that corroborated the evidences of evolution:

physical barriers ( ie rivers or mountain ranges ) serve as
demarcation of many species distributional change
Mendel’s Key to the Missing Link

1822-1884

Father of Genetics

How genetic traits in an animal or plant

population could be selected by environmental
pressures and how these populations easily
become adapted to its environment
 Check your Activity 2 :

Charles Lyell on Uniformitarianism

Andreas Vesalius on Comparative
Anatomy

Ernst Haeckel on Embryology

Nicholas Steno on Paleontology

Carolus Linnaeus on Nomenclature Thomas Morgan on Modern

and Classification Genetics

Thomas Malthus on Human Population

Georges Cuvier on Extinction

Evidences of Evolution
1. Fossil Records/ Paleontology

Sedimentary deposits contain fossils,

remains or traces of animals, plants and
other organisms from the past
2. Evidence
from Geographic Distribution:
Biogeography

The distribution of species in a particular

landscape provides resounding proof
about evolution

Patterns of migration, plate tectonics

Marsupials in Australia
3. Evidence from Comparative Anatomy

Homology- any anatomical feature

originally possessed by an ancestor
that has subsequently been modified
by its descendants for specific
function
homologous

Pentadactyl limb
ANALOGOUS STRUCTURES are structures that perform the same function but have very
different embryological development or set of structures like bones.
4. Embryology

All embryos exactly look the same

during the very early stages of the
development
Shared history of vertebrates

All vertebrates embryos are

characterized by having gill
pouches and tails
6. Vestigial Structures
and Organs
Historical remnants of structures that did have
a function in the earlier ancestors and provided
evidence for shared ancestry

Structures that are reduced forms of

functional structures– no current function

Ex: appendix
Example: pelvis and femur in a
whale
7.Evidence from Physiology and
Biochemistry
All living things passed on genetic
information from generation to
generation via DNA molecule

Closely related species will be similar

to one another than their more
distantly related species
Example : Chimpanzees and
Human ( 1.2% difference
genetic code )
Example 2 :Cytochrome c
8. Evidence from Selection

How bacteria become resistant to

antibiotic?
The resistance level of bacterial
population increases due to
natural selection
Bacteria with high resistance
survive and pass their genetic
make up to the next generation
Antibiotic resistance
OTHER TERMS IN EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY ( Please read your books )

Divergent Evolution Gradualism

Convergent Evolution Punctuated equilibrium

Extinction

Adaptive Radiation

Coevolution