Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology that analyzes the four mechanisms of evolution: natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, and gene flow. Natural selection was independently discovered as the engine of evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, based on patterns in the geographic distribution of species. Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of heredity. R. A. Fisher unified Darwin and Mendel in the modern synthesis.
The investigational range of current research has widened to encompass the genetic architecture of adaptation, molecular evolution, and the different forces that contribute to evolution, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and biogeography. The newer field of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") investigates how embryogenesis is controll...
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Darwin's finches or Galapagos finches. Darwin, 1845. Journal of researches into the natural history ...
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A phylogenetic tree of living things, based on rRNA data, showing the separation of bacteria, archae...
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Ernst Haeckel's "tree of life", Darwin's metaphorical description of the pattern of universal common...