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morphological diversity (which stems from genetic diversity and molecular diversity [11]) functional diversity (which is a measure of the number of functionally disparate species within a population (e.g. different feeding mechanism, different motility, predator vs prey, etc.) [ 12 ] )
In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms to species, and individual organisms and molecules, such as DNA and proteins.
The main subfields of evolutionary ecology are life history evolution, sociobiology (the evolution of social behavior), the evolution of interspecific interactions (e.g. cooperation, predator–prey interactions, parasitism, mutualism) and the evolution of biodiversity and of ecological communities.
The result of four billion years of evolution is the diversity of life around us, with an estimated 1.75 million different species in existence today. [ 71 ] [ 72 ] Usually the process of speciation is slow, occurring over very long time spans; thus direct observations within human life-spans are rare.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...
Toggle Evolution of biodiversity subsection. ... evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological organisms over generations due to natural ...
Their evolution is cited as an example of both natural and sexual selection. [40] [41] A 2008 study suggests that sympatric speciation has occurred in Tennessee cave salamanders. [42] Sympatric speciation driven by ecological factors may also account for the extraordinary diversity of crustaceans living in the depths of Siberia's Lake Baikal. [43]
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]