Biol 418: Evolution Dr. Jann Vendetti

1. Biol 418: EvolutionDr. Jann Vendetti • syllabus review • quiz

2. Definitions • Conviction (to be convinced) v. belief: scientists don’t believe in scientific theories, they have been convinced by evidence. • Evolution: heritable change through time & descent w/ modification • Fossil record: history of life on earth • Clade: group of closely related organisms • Taxon, taxa: one taxon, two taxa: a unit of classification usually a • species, variety, breed, varietal, subspecies, etc. • Develop v. evolve: a individual develops, a species evolves

3. Definitions • Conviction (to be convinced) v. belief: scientists don’t believe in scientific theories, they have been convinced by evidence. • Do you believe in evolution? This question is problematic. • Do you accept evolution? This question is better. • Are you convinced of evolution? This question is better. • Evolution: heritable change through time, descent w/ modification • Fossil record: history of life on earth • Clade: group of closely related organisms • Taxon, taxa: one taxon, two taxa: a unit of classification usually a • species, variety, breed, varietal, subspecies, etc. • Develop v. evolve: a individual develops, a species evolves

4. Review • (D) KPCOFGS: (domain), kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species • Data: collected pieces of information (facts), (data are, not data is) • Fact: piece of information or phenomenon that can be repeatedly observed or tested and can be considered real. • Hypothesis: an untested explanation of phenomena that you must accept or reject through testing. Ex. Null hypothesis • Law:a generalization based on empirical observations of phenomena (lacks explanatory powers)

5. Review • Theory: An explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon a large body of evidence and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers • Defines a science or scientific discipline • makes generalizations about observations and consists of an interrelated, coherent set of ideas and models

6. Review • Theory: An explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon a large body of evidence and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers • Defines a science or scientific discipline • makes generalizations about observations and consists of an interrelated, coherent set of ideas and models • Hypothesis v. theory in biology: • Common use of “theory” = Guess • Scientific use of “theory” ≠ Guess • Scientific theories must be: • able to make predictions • supported by observations and tested hypotheses. • able to be TESTED. Ask, how would you test this?

7. Review • Theory: An explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon a large body of evidence and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers • Defines a science or scientific discipline • makes generalizations about observations and consists of an interrelated, coherent set of ideas and models • Well-known scientific theories • Theory of Earth Rotation (1613) • Theory of Blood Circulation (1628) • Theory of Gravity (1687) • Cell Theory (1839) • Germ Theory of Disease (1856) • Theory of Evolution (1859) • Theory of Plate Tectonics (1920) • Theory of Relativity (1920)

8. Evolution: theory or fact? • Theory: An explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon a large body of evidence and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers • Fact: piece of information or phenomena that can be repeatedly observed or tested and can be considered real.

9. Evolution: theory or fact? • Both! • Theory of evolution by: (a mechanism) • Natural Selection • Artificial Selection • Genetic Drift • Sexual Selection • Fact of Evolution: the evolution of populations can be observed.

10. “If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life...” Daniel Dennet (Philosophy Professor, Tufts University), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)  p.21

11. “If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life…” Daniel Dennet (Philosophy Professor, Tufts University), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)  p.21 “Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.” Jared Diamond (Professor & Evolutionary Biologist, UCLA) (1997)

12. “If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of even Newton or Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life...” Daniel Dennet (Philosophy Professor, Tufts University), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)  p.21 “Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.” Jared Diamond (Professor & Evolutionary Biologist, UCLA) (1997) "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." Theodosius Dobzhansky (Geneticist, CalTech) (1973)

14. “All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.” William Jennings Bryan (American politician& lawyer against evolution in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes)(1925)

15. Hall of Evolution, Paris

16. Brief history of thinking about organisms (pre-evolution) (Greece) 360 B.C.E: Essentialism: Plato’s The Republic: perfect forms, variation is imperfection renditions of truth (France) 1750s: Enlightenment: logic, questions authority, asks for mechanisms for phenomena (G.B.) late 1700s- early1800s: Natural Theology: William Paley, “Watchmaker”, argument from design, influential to Darwin, as a way of making an argument, but not fully convincing… Hall of Evolution, Paris

17. (France) early 1800s: Cuvier(Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier): rocks of Paris contain fossils of marine organisms, developed “extinction” (big idea, heresy), migration but no evolution.

18. (France) early 1800s: Cuvier(Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier): rocks of Paris contain fossils of marine organisms, developed “extinction” (big idea, heresy), migration but no evolution. Lamarck(Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck): inheritance of acquired characteristics, “Great Chain of Being.”

19. Lamarck(Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck): inheritance of acquired characteristics, “Great Chain of Being.”

20. Lamarck(Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck): inheritance of acquired characteristics, “Great Chain of Being.” WRONG!

21. Buffon(Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon): species not fixed, evolution happens, species evolve from other species, no mechanism… First modern Evolutionary thinking

22. Buffon(Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon): species not fixed, evolution happens, species evolve from other species, no mechanism… “Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created…few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo modification [and are]…the descendants…of pre-existing forms…the first author who in modern times has treated [this] in a scientific spirit was Buffon.” – Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1849. First modern Evolutionary thinking

23. 3 Big (French) Pre-Darwinian Thinkers (France) early 1800s: Cuvier(Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier): rocks of Paris contain fossils of marine organisms, developed “extinction” (big idea, heresy), migration but no evolution. Lamarck(Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck): inheritance of acquired characteristics. Buffon(Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon): species not fixed, evolution happens, species evolve from other species, but no mechanism.

24. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) • Voyage of the HMS Beagle (1831-1836): ship’s naturalist on voyage around the World (22 yrs old)

25. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) • Voyage of the HMS Beagle (1831-1836): ship’s naturalist on voyage around the World (22 yrs old) • Wealthy English family • Grandson of Erasmus Darwin, doctor and author of Zoonomia: pre-evolution poem • Former divinity and medical student, never good at school • Collector of beetles, began as a geologist

26. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) • Voyage of the HMS Beagle (1831-1836): ship’s naturalist on voyage around the World (22 yrs old) • Wealthy English family • Grandson of Erasmus Darwin, doctor and author of Zoonomia: pre-evolution poem • Former divinity and medical student, never good at school • Collector of beetles, began as a geologist • Returned from Beagle expedition to England in 1836, cataloged his collections and made observations • Was reluctant to publish his ideas of transmutation & Natural Selection because of religious backlash (Victorian England) • Collected data, wrote Voyage of the Beagle, had kids, and worked on barnacles for 20 years • His first ideas about N.S. came from organisms on islands

27. www.carlwozniak.com

28. THEN, • In 1854, a scientific paper contained this important quote: • “Every species has come into existence coincident both in space • and time with a pre-existing, closely allied species.” • implication: new species appear not just near, but actually from another species • ….but this insight didn’t come from Darwin. • It came from Alfred Russell Wallace

29. Alfred Russell Wallace (1823 –1913) • Came from a working-class British family • Spent many years in South America • In 1854, went to Indonesia, where he contracted Malaria • During a fever, he wrote down his ideas on Natural Selection • Like Darwin, read the Malthus essay on population growth (Principle of Population, 1798). • Sent a letter about his thoughts to Darwin (because Wallace had read Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle). • Both their papers on evolution by N.S. are read at an academic meeting (Linnean Society) in 1858. Generate little interest. • 1859, Darwin publishes the Origin of species

30. On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London, 1859) • ~ 400 pages. An Abstract (!)

31. On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London, 1859) • Less about how speciation happens than about species being related to pre-existing species = COMMON DESCENT

32. On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London, 1859) • Less about how speciation happens than about species being related to pre-existing species. COMMON DESCENT

33. On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (London, 1859) • Less about how speciation happens than about species being related to pre-existing species. COMMON DESCENT • Natural Selection is the MECHANISM of evolution that Darwin proposed. • Grand Analogy: Artificial Selection is to humans as Natural Selection is to Nature. • As humans creates domestic breeds and varieties by choosing which animals or plants reproduce, so does Nature.

34. Darwin’s Grand Analogy: Humans select desirable traits in organisms: Artificial SelectionNature (the environment) selects organisms with advantageous traits: Natural Selection Humans are to Artificial Selection asNature (the environment) is to Natural Selection Flickr “sue tortoise”

35. Darwin’s Grand Analogy: Humans select desirable traits in organisms: Artificial SelectionNature (the environment) selects organisms with advantageous traits: Natural Selection Natural selection works on individuals (they live or die, leave offspring or not). Populations evolve. Flickr “sue tortoise”

36. Darwin’s Grand Analogy: Humans select desirable traits in organisms: Artificial SelectionNature (the environment) selects organisms with advantageous traits: Natural Selection The product of Natural selection are adaptations. Flickr “sue tortoise”

37. Darwin’s Grand Analogy: Humans select desirable traits in organisms: Artificial Selection,Nature (the environment) selects organisms with advantageous traits: Natural Selection Selection (Natural or Artificial) acts on the phenotype (the product of genes). Flickr “sue tortoise”

38. Artificial Selection example: Wolf ancestor to domestic dog breeds www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/5/l_015_02.html

39. Artificial Selection example: Wild to domestic silver foxes

40. Artificial Selection example: Wild cabbage

41. Artificial Selection example: tomato

42. Artificial Selection example: pigeons Domestic Pigeons

44. Variation comes first • The central principle of Darwinian evolution by Natural Selection • is that variation comes before adaptation. • mutations come first and happen by chance • individuals cannot “try to mutate” to survive

45. On the Origin of Species (London, 1859) • 4 postulates of Natural Selection: • (1) Individuals within a species are variable • (2) Some of this variation is passed to offspring (in other words, traits are heritable) • (3) More offspring are produced each generation than can survive ( “struggle for life”) • (4) Individuals with the most favorable variations survive and produce the most offspring. • NOTE: This means that survival, reproduction, and adaptations are not random.

46.   “All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.” William Jennings Bryan (American politician & lawyer against evolution in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1925) Why the backlash? True: Evolution has no purpose and it does not have a goal. The fact and theory of evolution by (whichever mechanism) explains genetic & morphological change in populations of organisms. Not a religion. Not a moral code.

47.   “All the ills from which America suffers can be traced to the teaching of evolution.” William Jennings Bryan (American politician & lawyer against evolution in The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1925) Why the backlash? True: Evolution has no purpose and it does not have a goal. The fact and theory of evolution by (whichever mechanism) explains genetic & morphological change in populations of organisms. Not a religion. Not a moral code. Is agnostic to the nature of god(s): Like asking, “what color is Tuesday?” Evolutionary theory does not test, predict, or support the presence or absence of supernatural entities because science can’t do this.

49. Dover Pennsylvania School District Required Statement prior to teaching Evolution (2005) Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin's Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part. Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations. Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves. With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.

50. The argument from Intelligent Design (ID) is sometimes expressed by this example: “Evolution of life as described by natural selection is as likely as a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and spontaneously assembling a Boeing 747 airplane.” ID incorrectly assumes that evolution by natural selection creates complexity RANDOMLY.