Evolutionary Biology

Natural Selection and Adaptation

Darwins observations:
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All species can produce more offspring than their environment

can support and will not survive to reproduce
This suggest an unequal ability of individuals to survive
and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favourable
traits in the population over time
Members of the population often vary in their inherited traits
Individuals whose traits give a higher probability of
surviving and reproducing in an environment tend to
leave more offspring than other individuals

Natural Selection:
Natural selection is a process by which individuals that have
beneficial traits survive at a higher rate than those that dont:Populations evolve not individuals. Selection can diminish or amplify
traits that differ between individuals in populations
Overtime selection can increase the match between organisms and
their environment:- Environmental factors vary in space and time,
traits that are favourable in place may not be in others
Environmental change or migration into new environments, natural
selection may result in adaptation to these new conditions:- Could
give rise to new species, selection continues and always happens

Homology:
Characteristics that share the same evolutionary origin but the
function has changed
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Anatomy
Embryology
Genes and Proteins

Two types on homologous genes:

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Orthologous Genes
Paralogous Genes

Evolutionary control on the genes:

Mutations in genes
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Affects development and morphology

Population genetics: is the movement of alleles in populations

Alleles proliferate under positive selection
Alleles can be driven to extinction under purifying selection

Phylogenetic trees
Hypothesis of evolutionary relationships
Trees are constructed using characters A, T, G, C and amino acids
They are used to understand relationships between species,
relationships between populations, epidemiology, population
movements and speciation
Branches: Represents the evolutionary distance of a taxa from a
common ancestor
Taxon: The organism
Taxa: A number of organisms
Node: Represents the most common ancestor between taxa
Clade: A number of closely related taxa

Polyphyletic Group

Some members have different ancestors

Monophyletic Group
A single common ancestor and all its descendants

Paraphyletic Group
Consists of an ancestral species and some but not all of the
descendants

Phylogeography
Molecular relationships between populations
Provide ancestral and geographic history
Indicates population interactions with the environment and each
other (predator/prey relationship)