Good Morning Ms Refalo and students.
Slide 1:
Our planet is unique and possesses a diversity of living organisms and species. In fact, today, 8.7 million species are estimated to be present on earth. These numbers continue to grow as new species evolve and are discovered by scientists (UNEP, 2011). Despite the discovery of millions of new species and many scientific breakthroughs, the question of how the diversity of life came about on the planet still remains. There are many scientists whom have committed their time into discovering and proposing new answers to this question. The majority of the main theories involve the idea that evolution serves as an understanding of how two species can evolve from one (WGBH Educational, 2001).
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In historical times; the biblical or creation view was widely accepted (Gupta, 2011). Creation views refer to God’s work of calling the universe and all that is in it, into existence ex nihilio (out of nothing) and of making complex organisms out of simple components (Frontier, 2011). However through technological developments and the changing nature of science, in the time period of the 1800s, individuals began asking questions and making observations of the diversity of life on earth (Campbell, 2010). One of the earliest theories of evolution was put forward in 1809 by Jean Baptiste Chevalier de Lamarck (French naturalist) who proposed that when an organisms develops a need for a particular structure, the appearance of that structure is induced. This idea was based on the observation that body parts used extensively to cope with the environment become larger and stronger, while those that are not used deteriorate (Mckie, 2012). However, Lamarck’s theory was highly protested because he believed that the beneficial characteristics could be handed on to the offspring (Potts, 2005). Lamarck’s discredited theory was looked down upon by creationists, how his ideas contributed to the developing ideas of evolution that existed at the time and therefore, despite being wrong, his ideas were still important to theories and even Darwin acknowledged …show more content…
For example, bat (mammal), eagle (bird) and pterosaur (reptile) all developed Analagous structures, despite being in completely different animal groupings (Delvin, 2015).
Slide 10:
Parallel evolution is the independent evolution of similar traits, starting from a similar ancestral form (Mckie, 2012). For example, flowering plants and insects depend of each other and therefore evolved into species around a similar time, as neither can survive without each other (Jacobs, 2011). Another example involves, the ‘bobcat’ and ‘quoll’ developing similar traits as they are from the ‘cat’ niche (Laurent, 2013).
Slide 11:
Divergent evolution provides evidence that the accumulation of differences between groups can lead to the formation of new species (Refalo, 2015). It is usually a result of separation of the same species to different or isolated environments which blocks gene flow (Talkorigins 2011). For example, the large array of different species of butterflies in which have evolved since the evolution of the original butterfly species (Potts,