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origin of species

Many evolutionary ideas were developed to explain findings in the field of biology. Ideas concerning the transmutation of species conflicted with the existing beliefs that species were parts of a designed hierarchy that were unchanging and that only humans were unique and unrelated to all the other animals.

A scientist by the name Charles Darwin wrote a book on the origin of species. His book attracted a lot of interest as it was written for readers that were not necessarily specialists. Darwin’s findings were taken very seriously since he was an eminent scientist. He presented evidence that brought about a lot of religious, scientific and philosophical discussion. After two decades, it was widely accepted that evolution is like a branching pattern having a common descent. Around 1930s and 1940s, modern evolutionary synthesis was developed. This led to the concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection by Darwin becoming the center to modern evolutionary theory. This concept also became the unifying concept of all life sciences.

SUMMARY OF DARWIN THEORY

The key facts and inferences that can be drawn from Darwin’s theory of evolution can be summarized as follows;

• Every species is fertile enough that in case all offspring survived in order to reproduce, there would be population growth.
• Despite fluctuations from time to time, the size of the population roughly remains the same
• Resources like food are limited and relatively stable with time.
• There is a struggle for survival (inference).
• Individuals belonging to the same population vary significantly from one another.
• Much of the variation between individuals is heritable.
• Individuals that are less suited to an environment are less likely to survive as well as reproduce. Individuals that are more suited to an environment on the other hand are more likely to survive as well as reproduce and leave their traits that are heritable to future generations, producing the process of natural selection. "Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory .
• This slow process of natural selection leads to populations changing in order to adapt to their environments. These variations are also said to accumulate with time and form new species (inference).