Evolution is one the major unifying concepts of modern biology.

There are numerous mechanisms that lead to evolutionary change such as: natural selection, mutations, genetic drift, and gene flow. First, natural section is when an individual of a population expresses a favored phenotype. The more advantageous trait allows the individual to have more surviving offspring; thus, the trait becomes more common in the population. For natural selection to occur individuals must differ from one another (genetic variation) and the inherited differences must affect their fitness. For example, if there are green and brown colored beetles within a population and their predators eat the green beetles because they stand out more, the brown coloring will be the favored phenotype. Second, mutations can also lead to evolutionary change by adding new alleles or deactivating old ones (pseudogenes). A mutation is a change in the nucleotidebase sequence of a gene or DNA molecule. Mutations can be caused by radiation, viruses, or errors that occur during meiosis and DNA replication, among other causes. The affect it has on an individuals phenotype can vary from highly adaptive to essentially useless. Third, genetic drift is a change over time of gene frequencies in a population. Genetic drift is express through the bottleneck effect and the founder effect. The Bottleneck effect is when a disaster causes a loss in population. The surviving population as a result has a dissimilar gene pool than the original population. The founder effect is when a part of a population is isolated from its parent population. Lastly, gene migration or gene flow is the movement of genes within or between populations. As individuals immigrate and emigrate, they bring in and take away genes altering the frequencies of them. Gene flow within a population will increase its genetic variation; gene flow across populations can reduce the amount of genetic variation. Presently, many pathogenic bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics. A mutation in the DNA or RNA of bacteria can give it immunity to an antibiotic. These bacteria can then transfer and copy its genetic material to other bacteria. Natural selection will then act upon the bacteria; the ones immune to the antibiotic will survive to reproduce. Also, scientists can study the comparative biochemistry of organisms. For example, if one evaluates the sequences of common proteins such as hemoglobin, they will find that the human amino acid sequence is similar but still different from an

apes sequence. However, an ape and a human may have more similar sequencing than a human and a bird. This supports the idea that humans and apes had a more recent common ancestor. Finally, the comparison of fossils from different time periods can be used to prove evolution. For instance, fossils show that ancestors of modern snakes once had limbs but lost them. Additionally, fossil evidence proves the evolutionary relationships between birds and dinosaurs. One of the first people to use this method was Curvier. He proposed catastrophism.