Evolutionary Science British Council January 2006 David Booth

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Evolutionary ScienceBritish Council January
2006David Booth
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The Greeks
Anaximander (610-546BC)
Life originated in the water Simple forms
precede the complex
Hercules saving Hesione from the Ketos (550BC)
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Icons of Evolution
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
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Modern Evolutionary Synthesis
Gregor Mendel 1822-1884
Motoo Kimura 1924-1994
Kary Banks Mullis 1944-present
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DNA

• Blue print of life
• Genes Proteins Traits
• Can be used as invisible tags / marks
• DNA fingerprints and Gene Sequences
• No function, do not produce traits
• Used in crime/nature forensics
• Scientists extract DNA from cells

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DNA
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DNA
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DNA
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Levels of Relatedness
Species
Tribes
Increased sharing of Genetic marks
Regions
Populations
Sub-populations
Siblings
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DNA fingerprint
Gene Sequence
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The processes of Evolution
Natural Selection
Mutation
Gene Flow
Random drift
New species arise when these forces are not
balanced
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Odd one out
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Odd one out
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Tree of life

• Life is fundamentally interconnected we all
  share common ancestors

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Tree of Life
(Wolters, J. and V. A. Erdmann. 1986)
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Ring or Pool of Life (LUCA)

• Horizontal gene transfer Antibiotic resistance

(Simonson et al. 2005)
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Stromatolites

• Archaean Bacteria - Photosynthetic

(Shark Bay - Australia)
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Tree of Mammals
The tree of mammals mtDNA
With additional data dates the split of Humans
from Great apes at 10-13 MYBP
Overall correlates well with fossil and
radiometric dating methods
(Arnason et al. 1996)
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Tree of Humanity
mtDNA sequences
Verifies Out of Africa and mitochondrial eve
Molecular clock dates this to approximately
140,000 YBP
(Ingman et al. 2000)
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Tree of Humanity
(Templeton, 2002)
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Where are we going?
Chimp genome project indicates how we have changed
Biological Evolution for Humans may have
stopped Cultural or Memetic evolution is
happening at an extremely fast rate
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Humans as earthlings
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Why is it Relevant?
Bjørn Lomborg (1965-present)
The skeptical environmentalist raises some
interesting points on our true knowledge of the
current mass extinction
Myers - 40,000 species lost every year?
E O Wilson 27,000 to 100,000 species per year?
P Ehrlich 250,000 species per year?
Current estimates of the total number of species
on the planet range from 2-80 million are at best
educated guesses (Balmford 2003)
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Why is it Relevant?
How can we estimate extinction rates? If we dont
even know how many species there are or the rate
of formation.
Evolution is about measuring and cataloguing
change
We have catalogued 1.4 to 1.5 million species
We can examine trends in populations and
habitatsHow have the natural ranges of species
changed?
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Population Indices
Birds
Amphibians
Vertebrates
(Balmford et al. 2003)
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Range contractions
Grey wolf (Canis lupus) Thought to be a keystone
species (1990 Canid Action Plan)
Christmas Island Pipistrelle Pipistrellus
murrayi (DoEH, Australia)
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Conserving Atlantic salmon
(Booth et al. 2004)
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Algae conservation
Algae contribute 60 of global photosynthesis
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Museum Specimens
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Measuring Invasions

• Invasion predate historical records, as such may
  not be a problem. Conservation resource can be
  applied correctly

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What would I teach the World
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What would I teach the World
Evolution It gives us a respect for nature and
the environment as it points to our origins