Concept
Evolutionary biology
Overview
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 controlled, thus yielding a wider synthesis that integrates developmental biology with the fields of study covered by the earlier evolutionary synthesis. Evolution accounts for the unity and diversity of life on Earth; Theodosius Dobzhansky famously said that nothing in biology makes sense without it.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Evolutionary biology
- Julian Huxley
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Francisco J. Ayala
- Peter Singer
- Richard Dawkins
- Robert Nozick
- Daniel Dennett
- Victor Reppert
- J. Baird Callicott
Related ideas
- Academic discipline
- Molecular biology
- Mutation
- Natural selection
- Systematics
- Zoology
- Richard Lewontin
- Botany
- Computer science
- J. B. S. Haldane
- Charles Darwin
- Developmental biology
- Biology
- Evolution
- Ernst Mayr
- Adaptation
- Modern synthesis (20th century)
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Consciousness.