BIOLOGY 1B-Evolution Notes

BIOLOGY 1B-Evolution Notes ABLE OF CONTENTS 1 – Evolutionary History.................................................................................................2 2 – Explanatory Power of Evolutionary Theory..............................................................5 3 – Molecular Basis of Evolution...................................................................................10 4 – Natural Selection ……………………………………………………………………………………………….14 5 – Speciation...............................................................................................................17 6 – Phylogenetic Systematics........................................................................................21 7 – Cladistic Applications..............................................................................................24 8 – Fossil Record...........................................................................................................26 9 – Evolutionary Pattern and Process...........................................................................29 10 – Macroevolution.....................................................................................................31 11 – Vertebrate Evolution.............................................................................................33 12 – Rise of the Hominins.............................................................................................35 13 – Conclusions and Review........................................................................................38 Evolution 2/25/15 – Lecture 1 Evolutionary History Allen Shabel Lectures held MWF from 8:10-9:00 AM Office hours: Mon & Wed 9-10 AM in 5045 VLSB and by appointment Evolution midterm on April 8th, final on May 11th History of the Concept of Evolution  Concept of Evolution controversial in some parts of the world How have we arrived at where we are today?  40,000 years of history  Homo (our species) and their interactions in the natural world  Earliest ideas of Western foundations of evolutionary thought  Geological thought in the century before and leading up to Darwin o What influenced Darwin?  Adaptation (intelligible outside of evolutionary concepts) and natural theology  The Concept of Evolution  Homology and Analogy Chauvet Cave  Ardeche River Valley, Southern France  Discovered in mid 1990s  Well known because of impressive array of paintings inside cave system  Found a small point of access into rock that opened up into large gallery  Found marks on the wall made by torches that people had carried that could be dated by radiocarbon dating  Cave estimated to be 32,000 years old  Found paintings, drawing, sketches, art of animals o Horses – Equid  Not domestic horses, kin or relative to horses  Closer to a zebra o Large panels of Rhinos and various felines o Cave bears – Ursus spelaeus  Vegetarian bear that coexisted with humans in Europe o Cat/Lion – sub species Panthera leo spalaea  Closely related to African Lion  Beautiful artful depictions o Art was suppose to be progressive but the next more recent cave sights known by scientists from 15,000 years ago were less beautiful, artful, and faithful renderings of the history of the landscape o More symbolic renderings  Painting reveal information about organisms that we did not know before o Lions are well known to hunt in packs 2  Today it is females that lead hunt  From the pictures in the cave, we can see that the male lion is leading the hunt and also that he has no mane o Can learn biological information from paintings  New sights have been discovered older than Chauvet o Sights in Indonesia and Spain about 40,000 years old Greco-Roman Precursors or Thought  Earliest records of written history  Wresting with the concept of a universal history o Had a notion of the earth forming out of a sort of chaos o Established the elements, fire, water, air, earth  The “father of biology” o Aristotle o 384-322 BCE o Very sophisticated biology o Dissected organisms o Very grounded in Anatomy and the study of nature o Understood nature to be organized in a great universal hierarchy  A great chain of being  Material world at the bottom throughout the lower materials then through vertebras, animals, then through human beings, and beyond  “Lower” plants through “higher plants” still influence how we talk about thing today Middle Ages  Long period of very few major biological scientific advances  “Dark period” Law of Superposition  Nicolas Steno in 1660 o Was brought the head of a shark to Steno in Italy o Steno examined the shark head o Shark’s teeth resembled “rocks” that people had previously called “tongue stones” o Tongue stones – fossils of shark teeth o One of the earliest recognitions of ancient life influencing contemporary life  More influential that Steno’s recognition of the existence of fossils was his influence on the Law of Superposition o Recognized the difference in strata of rocks – stratification of geological layers as you move up a hillside o Strata have “temporal” significance – significance about timing with the lower strata representing a lower time – with the movement upward representing a movement through time o Recognition of relative time of fossils found in the rock Age of Discovery  Explorers traveling the world to make maps for their governments and also taking botanists to collect specimens 3  Needed a system for organizing natural “curiosities”  Linnaeus organized things by lineages and branches o Working in a natura