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Overview

Think about all the different kinds of dogs, from big Great Danes to little Chihuahuas or short-legged Dachshunds. They’re all descended from wolves.

Breeders have been breeding dogs for thousands of years to create various kinds of dogs. They breed certain characteristics, like short legs, into the dog by selecting and mating dogs with similar physical features. The same process has been applied to other things as well, like creating tastier cabbages.

The characteristics that are being selected for in evolution aren’t really the traits, but rather the genes that cause those traits. Genes determine what an organism will look like during its embryonic stage because they provide instructions to the body on how it should grow.

Genes are passed on from one generation to the next. In this way, each individual is a unique combination of genes that were not present in any previous generation.

Artificial selection is the process of breeding animals or plants to select for certain characteristics. This can result in a new species with characteristics that differ from those of its ancestors. The most famous example is how we’ve bred dogs, which are now very different from their original wild wolf ancestors.

Big Idea #1: The wide spectrum of life today is the result of populations being separated and hence evolving separately.

There are many different species of animals on Earth, and each one is related to every other. If you go far enough back in time, all the animals will be connected to one another.

When people are separated, they can develop different characteristics. This is because their gene pools will be separate from each other and evolve over time.

Populations of living species can become separated because of natural disasters. Sometimes these populations are isolated by geographic events, such as earthquakes or floods.

Continents move due to plate tectonics, which causes populations of a species to become separated. Fossils found in South America, Africa, Australia, India and Antarctica have similarities because those continents were once joined together as one landmass. As the continents broke apart over time, life forms diverged and became different from each other.

Sometimes, new species of animals are created when they migrate to a different environment. A good example of this is the green iguana on Anguilla that migrated from another island over 160 miles away by floating on pieces of driftwood. It was found that they had evolved into a new species in isolation from other members of their kind. This shows how populations can find themselves in new environments and eventually diverge into something completely different than what existed before.

Big Idea #2: Competition among individuals and species drives evolution through natural selection.

The reason trees tend to be tall is because they compete for sunlight. They grow taller and taller, trying to reach the sun. The ones that are able to do this best then pass on their strong genes to their offspring.

In nature, predators and prey evolve to become faster. For example, cheetahs have evolved to be extremely fast in order to catch their prey (gazelles). In turn, gazelles have evolved longer legs so that they can run away from the cheetah. However, this process of evolution leads to a trade-off: The need for gazelle’s legs to get longer may make them more susceptible to breaking, which would leave the individual with no chance of survival. Thus an individual must balance speed and healthiness in order for it to survive.

Species fight each other for survival. This is an evolutionary arms race, and it takes millions of years to build up an arsenal of weapons to fight with. The species that survive are the ones who have the strongest genes. They pass their genes on to future generations, while those without strong genes do not survive and die out.