Evolutionary biology is a subfield ofbiology that analyzes the four mechanisms ofevolution:natural selection,mutation,genetic drift, andgene flow. The purpose of evolutionary biology is to observe thediversity of life on Earth. The idea of natural selection was first researched byCharles Darwin as he studied bird beaks. The discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through whatJulian Huxley called themodern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such asgenetics andecology,systematics, andpaleontology. Huxley was able to take what Charles Darwin discovered and elaborate to build on his understandings.
Evolutionary biology explains diversity between species by analyzing changes in a few individuals within a population over multiple generations.[1] The purpose of this subfield is to determine how genetic variation develops, how it is inherited, and how the evolutionary mechanisms shape a population's genetic composition. Researchers study the traits of organisms to identify which characteristics enhance or reduce survival and reproduction. Advantageous traits tend to be passed on to offspring, contributing to evolutionary change as those traits become more common.
These processes are studied at different levels of complexity from observing features in living or fossilized species to analyzing DNA genomic sequencing between species.[2]
The idea of evolution by natural selection was proposed byCharles Darwin in 1859, but evolutionary biology, as anacademic discipline in its own right, emerged during the period of themodern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s.[3] It was not until the 1980s that many universities had departments of evolutionary biology.
Microbiology too is becoming an evolutionary discipline now that microbial physiology andgenomics are better understood. The quickgeneration time of bacteria and viruses such asbacteriophages makes it possible to explore evolutionary questions.
More recently, the merge between biological science and applied sciences gave birth to new fields that are extensions of evolutionary biology, includingevolutionary robotics,engineering,[10]algorithms,[11]economics,[12] and architecture.[13] The basic mechanisms of evolution are applied directly or indirectly to come up with novel designs or solve problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. The research generated in these applied fields, contribute towards progress, especially from work on evolution incomputer science and engineering fields such as mechanical engineering.[14]
Inevolutionary developmental biology, scientists look at how the different processes in development play a role in how a specific organism reaches its current body plan. The genetic regulation of ontogeny and the phylogenetic process is what allows for this kind of understanding of biology. By looking at different processes during development, and going through the evolutionary tree, one can determine at which point a specific structure came about.[15][16]
Some evolutionary biologists ask the most straightforward evolutionary question: "what happened and when?". This includes fields such aspaleobiology, where paleobiologists and evolutionary biologists, including Thomas Halliday and Anjali Goswami, studied the evolution of early mammals going far back in time during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (between 299 million to 12,000 years ago).[23][24] Other fields related to generic exploration of evolution ("what happened and when?" ) includesystematics andphylogenetics.
The modern evolutionary synthesis was devised at a time when the molecular basis of genes was unknown. Today, evolutionary biologists try to determine thegenetic architecture underlying visible evolutionary phenomena such asadaptation and speciation. They seek answers to questions such as which genes are involved, how interdependent are the effects of different genes, what do the genes do, and what changes happen to them (e.g.,point mutations vs.gene duplication or evengenome duplication). They try to reconcile the highheritability seen intwin studies with the difficulty in finding which genes are responsible for this heritability usinggenome-wide association studies.[25] The modern evolutionary synthesis involved agreement about which forces contribute to evolution, but not about their relative importance.[26]
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^"Evolutionary engineering".Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, Department of Applied Life Sciences, Lab. Extremophiles.Archived from the original on 16 December 2016.
^Bernstein, H. et al. Genetic damage, mutation, and the evolution of sex. Science. 1985 Sep 20;229(4719):1277-81. doi: 10.1126/science.3898363. PMID 3898363.
^Avise, J.C. Perspective: The evolutionary biology of aging, sexual reproduction, and DNA repair. Evolution. 1993 Oct;47(5):1293–1301. doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1993.tb02155.x. PMID 28564887.
^Hendrikse, Jesse Love; Parsons, Trish Elizabeth; Hallgrímsson, Benedikt (2007). "Evolvability as the proper focus of evolutionary developmental biology".Evolution & Development.9 (4):393–401.doi:10.1111/j.1525-142X.2007.00176.x.PMID17651363.S2CID31540737.
