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Charles Darwin Accomplishments

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The accomplishments of Charles Darwin have made contributions to three fields: evolutionary biology; the philosophy of science; and the modern zeitgeist. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace each developed an explanation of why variations occur and basic mechanism of evolution. This mechanism is known as natural selection. Even though both Darwin and Wallace each developed explanation for natural selection; Charles Darwin gave a more thorough explanation and documented each theory to his book. Charles Darwin taught society about the theory of evolution, whilst studying on an island he learnt that species change over time and adapt to their environment. Whilst studying different animals and plant; Darwin noticed that living creatures produce …show more content…

As each population settled in a certain place they began to develop different variations as a result of natural selection and other processes in order for them to be able to survive and adapt to different environments. There are three primary causes of human variation namely: mutations, gene flow and sex. The first is mutations which are changes within the DNA. The DNA of an organism affects its appearance, its behaviour and its physiology. This means that a change within the DNA can result in a change within all aspects of its life. Mutations can be beneficial, neutral or harmful for an organism, mutations are random meaning that whether a certain mutation occurs or not is not related to its usefulness. Not all cells within the body have mutations that do not matter to evolution. When a there is non-reproductive cell that will not be passed to an offspring it is known as Somatic mutation. The only mutations that are important are those that can be passed onto offspring’s through reproductive cells such as eggs and sperm and are called germ line mutation. A single germ line mutation can have many changes. The second is gene flow which is any movement of genes from one population to another. Gene flow includes many different events such a people moving to different countries or cities. If gene variations carried off into another population which does not have this gene, then gene flow can be very important in this sense. The third is sex which can introduce new gene combinations into a population. This genetic shuffling is another important source of genetic variation. When organisms reproduce sexually, genetic shuffling occurs, bringing together different combinations of

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