Charles Darwin's Theory Of Natural Selection

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1. Introduction The Origin of Species written by Charles Darwin sufficiently demonstrates the fact of evolution: that existing plants and animals developed and diversified from ancestral creatures. This diversification takes place at every level of biological organization. It was made scientifically intelligible by natural selection. Natural selection is the central mechanism that “causes the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.” Darwin’s lack of understanding with regard to heredity in his theory of natural selection resulted in a lot of skepticism in the scientific community (e.g. 1860 Oxford evolution debate). Nevertheless, his contemporary, Gregor Mendel, developed the principles …show more content…

Variations are apparent both within domesticated species and within species that thrive in the natural world. “No case is on record of a variable being ceasing to be variable under cultivation” (Darwin 18), an emphatic statement in regard to variation under domestication. For instance, species can vary in color, structure, and organs; surprisingly, only some slight variation can be attributed to the conditions of life that species are exposed to. Lastly, variations are perpetuated by inheritance. What is important about these variations? Even more, what is survival? Survival is advantageous variation, whereby variations allow species to adapt and survive in nature. Variation is raw material for evolution, thereby variations cause the origin of new …show more content…

Yet, if all these mechanisms were abandoned and certain deviations followed: genetic variation would remain constant and there would be constant allele frequencies within a population (e.g. Hardy–Weinberg principle). The Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium describes an idealized state, where genetic variations could be measured as changes from this equilibrium state. However, our natural world is dynamic and the struggle for existence is prominent, and therefore there is extensive genetic diversity occurring in robust populations and the extinction of less diversified populations. This is the fascinating basis of