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1-Page Summary of The Tangled Tree

Overview

The way scientists think about evolution has changed a lot since 1859, when Charles Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species. There have been many discoveries and developments in molecular biology that make it hard to keep track of what’s going on. Thankfully, David Quammen helps us understand these complex ideas by making them easier to grasp. He explains how science has shown life history to be quite a complex web of genes and bacteria.

There are some beliefs about how species evolve. However, it’s not as simple as one creature evolving into a new creature. You should rethink the idea of lineage and whether or not organisms really exist in their own right.

In this passage, we’ll learn about the discoveries that were made before Darwin published his theory of evolution. We’ll also learn how scientists in the early 20th century were 50 years ahead of their time and why they came to different conclusions than Darwin did.

Big Idea #1: The concept of a tree of life has a long history among scientists and naturalists.

There is a good chance that you have seen the drawing of “the tree of life”. It’s a representation of how one kind of living thing evolved. It starts with an amoeba and ends with human beings, but there are branches that represent different kinds of animals along the way.

The tree of life diagram has long been used to illustrate the evolutionary process. It was first mentioned by Aristotle, who believed that animals develop through a ladder-like progression from elements such as earth and water to plants, then animals and finally humans. He thought that all living things are part of one stairway to heaven.

An illustration shows the progressional development of organisms on Earth over time. The earliest forms start at the bottom left corner (hundreds of millions years ago) while new species emerge towards the right side (millions of years ago).

The ladder of ascent was popular in the Middle Ages, but by 1745 it had been replaced with a more tree-like model. This change occurred because there were more opportunities for people to travel and explore, which meant that they needed a better way to organize all the new information about plants and animals. The tree wasn’t necessarily an expression of evolution; it was just a convenient way to organize biological information. As French botanist Augustin Augier put it in 1801, “A Tree appears to be most proper means of grasping order and gradation.”

Ernst Haeckel was a gifted illustrator and biologist. He published multivolume books filled with detailed drawings of fascinating microscopic creatures, as well as trees of life. His evolutionary trees illustrated the precise lineage of living things.

Haeckel was making bold claims, but he was really just extending the ideas of another man—Charles Darwin.

Big Idea #2: Darwin’s theory of evolution remains highly influential.

Charles Darwin was on a trip from 1831 to 1836. He traveled through the Canary Islands and along the coast of South America, all the way to the Galapagos Archipelago. This journey changed his life and provided him with a lot of material for multiple books, including “On The Origin Of Species”, published in 1859.

Charles Darwin had largely sorted out his ideas about evolution after he returned from his trip. He recorded them in his notebook between 1837 and 1838.

The theory of evolution is centered on natural selection. Natural selection can be summed up as “survival of the fittest.” This means that only species with traits beneficial to survival will live to pass those traits onto the next generation.