Evolution: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:00, 10 November 2005

Revision as of 03:44, 10 November 2005

Line 2:

[[Image:Charles Darwin.jpg|thumb|150px|[[Charles Darwin]], father of the theory of evolution by [[natural selection]].]]

In [[biology]], '''evolution'''natural selection is the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation, affecting the overall makeup of the population and even leading to the emergence of [[speciation|new species]].

The development of the modern theory of evolution began with the introduction of the concept of [[natural selection]] in a joint [[1858]] paper by [[Charles Darwin]] and [[Alfred Russel Wallace]]. This theory achieved a wider readership in Darwin's [[1859]] book, ''[[The Origin of Species]]''. Darwin and Wallace proposed that evolution occurs because a heritable trait that increases an individual's chance of successfully reproducing will become more common, by inheritance, from one generation to the next, and likewise a heritable trait that decreases an individual's chance of reproducing will become rarer. This work was groundbreaking, and overturned other evolutionary theories, such as that advanced by [[Jean Baptiste Lamarck]].