Download darwin review

So far, so good.
A review of our studies on evolution.
5.23.11
 Charles Darwin, after 5 years as Naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle, began
formulating what would be his major contribution to Science, Evolution by
Natural Selection.
 Darwin’s travels to South America, Australia, the Pacific Islands and most
importantly, the Galapagos Islands, made him think about how species are
created. He had some experience with Artificial Selection, based on his
interests in breeding pigeons and England’s fascination in dog breeding.
 Thomas Malthus’ writing on overpopulation, in regards to English social
theory, made Darwin ponder the effect overpopulation has in nature. The
“struggle to survive” seed had been planted.
 Charles Lyell’s writings on geology, and the slowly and constantly changing
Earth, inspired Darwin to wonder if life must also slowly and constantly
change. Darwin realized that he must understand Earth’s history to
understand life’s history.
 As Sean B. Carroll stated “life forms are running to keep up, and most often
don’t”. Extinction is the norm, not the exception.
 Darwin “sat” on his theory for over 20 years for a variety of reasons, such as
worries of bringing dishonor to the Darwin name, the fact that his theory
was heretical, the fact that his wife, Emma, was deeply religious, and that
he was comfortably established within English society and he was worried
to risk ruining his scientific fate.
 Alfred Russel Wallace independently hypothesized about Natural Selection
and (luckily?) sent his paper directly to Darwin with a note to send along to
Joseph Hooker to be sent to the Linnean Society. Wallaces essay was sent
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along with an abstract of Darwin’s book in what is now referred to as “the
delicate situation”.
Although Darwin was working on his ideas for decades, and “Wallace didn’t
write anything Darwin didn’t already know”, Darwin and his friends had to
scramble so Darwin didn’t lose priority.
His book had 2 major ideas, “descent with modification” and “natural
selection”.
Evolution requires changes in regards to traits, selection and time.
Recently, studies of rock pocket mice have demonstrated how natural
selection works. With a small survival advantage black rock pocket mice can
overtake a population in as little as 150 generations.
Sean B. Carroll’s work on fruit fly’s and their wing spots have shown that
having a gene isn’t necessarily the deciding factor in evolution. Expressing
the gene, at a certain time and at a certain place, is just as important. Prof.
Carroll discovered “genetic switches” which control the expression of genes
into proteins.