Evolution

In the book, Biology, Campbell and Reece wrote about the ideas of Charles Darwin. Darwin wrote a book, The Origin of the Species about evolution. Darwin’s theory is that animals and plants have evolved over time.

Charles Darwin was educated at Cambridge University in England and there he studied religion and biology. After he finished his studies, he went on a trip to the Pacific Ocean on the ship named The Beagle. On this trip he was collecting information about unusual animals and plants that he found. His studying of these plants and animals made him think about the idea of evolution and natural selection.

One of the most important ideas that Darwin wrote about is the idea of adaptation. This means that animals adapt or change when they move from one place to another. The example that Darwin showed was with the birds called finches. In the islands of the Galapogos, Darwin found different kinds of finches. These birds were different in different islands. They had adapted to the kind of food that was there for them on the different islands.

In his ideas of descent, Darwin wrote about two kinds of changes. There is one kind that is natural and another that is artificial. Natural selection is simple. The weak die and the strong live. This is true for both plants and animals. When conditions are hard, only the strongest plants or the strongest animals can live. This is natural. The three most important facts about natural selection are that it occurs between animals and the environment they live in, it involves only conditions that are passed from animals to their children, and the environment plays a big part in its effects. Artificial selection is the kind of thing that people do to make plants or animals better or stronger. Farmers try to make their plants grow faster and produce more fruit or vegetables so they can make more money. They also try to make cows give more milk or produce meat with less fat. All of this is done artificially by science.

The most important idea that Darwin wrote about was that over long periods of time things change or evolve. Nothing stays the same. The animals that are alive today have evolved from other animals in the past. The plants that grow today are not exactly the same plants that grew thousands of years ago. It is important to remember that Darwin’s ideas are a theory and this means that they are not proven. This is important because there is a big conflict between the ideas of Darwin and some religious groups.