Evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time, i.e. their evolution. One who studies evolutionary biology is known as an evolutionary biologist, or less frequently evolutionist.
Evolutionary biology is an interdisciplinary field because it includes scientists from many traditional taxonomically-oriented disciplines. For example, it generally includes scientists who may have a specialist training in particular organisms such as mammalogy, ornithology, or herpetology but use those organisms as systems to answer general questions in evolution. It also generally includes paleontologists who use fossils to answer questions about the mode and tempo of evolution, as well as theoreticians in areas such as population genetics and evolutionary theory. In the 1990s developmental biology made a re-entry into evolutionary biology from its initial exclusion from the modern synthesis through the study of evolutionary developmental biology.
Its findings feed strongly into the new disciplines that study mankind's sociocultural evolution and evolutionary psychology during the millenia before the invention of agriculture. Evolutionary biology's frameworks of ideas and conceptual tools are now finding application in the study of a range of subjects from computing to nanotechnology.
Artificial life is a subfield of Bioinformatics that attempts to model, or even recreate, the evolution of organisms as described by evolutionary biology. Usually this is done through mathematics and computer models.
History
Main article: History of evolutionary thought
Evolutionary biology as an academic discipline in its own right emerged as a result of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a significant number of universities had departments that specifically included the term evolutionary biology in their titles. In the United States, as a result of the rapid growth of molecular and cell biology, many universities have split (or aggregated) their biology departments into molecular and cell biology-style departments and ecology and evolutionary biology-style departments (which often have subsumed older departments in paleontology, zoology and the like).
Microbiology has recently developed into an evolutionary discipline. It was originally ignored due to the paucity of morphological traits and the lack of a species concept in microbiology. Now, evolutionary researchers are taking advantage our extensive understanding of microbial physiology, the ease of microbial genomics, and the quick generation time of some microbes to answer evolutionary questions. Similar features have led to progress in viral evolution, particularly for bacteriophage.
Notable evolutionary biologists
Notable contributors to evolutionary biology include:
- James F. Crow
- Charles Darwin
- Erasmus Darwin
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
- Niles Eldredge
- Ronald Fisher
- J.B.S. Haldane
- Ernst Haeckel
- W.D. "Bill" Hamilton
- Motoo Kimura
- Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
- Richard Lewontin
- Gustave Malécot
- Pierre Louis Maupertuis
- Ernst Mayr
- John Maynard Smith
- Gregor Mendel
- Alfred Russel Wallace
- August Weismann
- George C. Williams
- Allan Wilson
- Edward Osborne Wilson
- Sewall Wright
Evolutionary biologists known primarily for their science popularization:
Notable popularizers of evolution whose research isn't primarily concerned with evolutionary biology include:
Bibliography
Textbooks
- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (3rd Edition), Sinauer Associates (1998) ISBN 0878931899
- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolution, Sinauer Associates (2005) ISBN 0878931872
- Mark Ridley, Evolution (3rd edition), Blackwell (2003) ISBN 1405103450
- Scott Freeman and Jon Herron, Evolutionary Analysis, Prentice Hall (2003) ISBN 0131018590
- Michael R. Rose and Laurence D. Mueller, Evolution and Ecology of the Organism, Prentice Hall (2005) ISBN 0130104043
- Monroe W. Strickberger, Evolution (3rd Edition), Jones & Bartlett Publishers (2000) ISBN 0763710660
Notable monographs and other works
(only author, date of publication and title listed here, see the article for publication details)
- Charles Darwin (1859) The Origin of Species and (1871) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
- Ronald Fisher (1930) The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
- John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry (1997) The Major Transitions in Evolution
- Elisabet Sahtouris (2000) Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution
- Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart (2005) The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma
- Important publications in evolutionary biology.
- Category:Notable publications in evolutionary biology