Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In utero development and malformations were correlated in severity. [14] Freiston and Galis look at the development of ribs, digits, and mammalian asymmetry. They argue that this construction is relevant for the study of disease, the consistency in evolution of body plans, and understanding of developmental constraints. [15]
Also called functionalism. The Darwinian view that many or most physiological and behavioral traits of organisms are adaptations that have evolved for specific functions or for specific reasons (as opposed to being byproducts of the evolution of other traits, consequences of biological constraints, or the result of random variation). adaptive radiation The simultaneous or near-simultaneous ...
The initial development of the cell marked the passage from prebiotic chemistry to partitioned units resembling modern cells. The final transition to living entities that fulfill all the definitions of modern cells depended on the ability to evolve effectively by natural selection. This transition has been called the Darwinian transition.
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]
Polyploidy occurs in some tissues of animals that are otherwise diploid, such as human muscle tissues. [45] This is known as endopolyploidy. Species whose cells do not have nuclei, that is, prokaryotes, may be polyploid, as seen in the large bacterium Epulopiscium fishelsoni. [46] Hence ploidy is defined with respect to a cell.
In the so-called modern synthesis of the early 20th century, between 1918 and 1930 Ronald Fisher brought together Darwin's theory of evolution, with its insistence on natural selection, heredity, and variation, and Gregor Mendel's laws of genetics into a coherent structure for evolutionary biology. Biologists assumed that an organism was a ...
Among offspring there are variations of genes due to the introduction of new genes via random changes called mutations or via reshuffling of existing genes during sexual reproduction. [9] [10] The offspring differs from the parent in minor random ways. If those differences are helpful, the offspring is more likely to survive and reproduce.
Origin of programmed cell death – Death of a cell mediated by intracellular program, often as part of development Origin of avian flight – Evolution of birds from non-flying ancestors Evolution of biological complexity – Tendency for maximum complexity to increase over time, though without any overall direction