Tài liệu PDF Introduction

Introduction

Introduction
Bởi:
OpenStaxCollege

All organisms are products of evolution adapted to their environment. (a) Saguaro (Carnegiea
gigantea) can soak up 750 liters of water in a single rain storm, enabling these cacti to survive
the dry conditions of the Sonora desert in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. (b) The
Andean semiaquatic lizard (Potamites montanicola) discovered in Peru in 2010 lives between
1,570 to 2,100 meters in elevation, and, unlike most lizards, is nocturnal and swims. Scientists
still do no know how these cold-blood animals are able to move in the cold (10 to 15°C)
temperatures of the Andean night. (credit a: modification of work by Gentry George, U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service; credit b: modification of work by Germán Chávez and Diego Vásquez,
ZooKeys)

All species of living organisms, from bacteria to baboons to blueberries, evolved at
some point from a different species. Although it may seem that living things today stay
much the same, that is not the case—evolution is an ongoing process.
The theory of evolution is the unifying theory of biology, meaning it is the framework
within which biologists ask questions about the living world. Its power is that it provides
direction for predictions about living things that are borne out in experiment after
experiment. The Ukrainian-born American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously
wrote that “nothing makes sense in biology except in the light of evolution.”
Theodosius Dobzhansky. “Biology, Molecular and Organismic.” American Zoologist
4, no. 4 (1964): 449.
He meant that the tenet that all life has evolved and diversified from a common
ancestor is the foundation from which we approach all questions in biology.

1/1