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Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
Charles Darwin published his "Origin
of Species" in 1859. Within this document he showed his genius by proposing
the following ideas (theory) of how change of organisms has taken place
over the long history of the Earth:
- Populations
overproduce offspring.
- Within populations
variations exist for all behavioral, structural, and physiological adaptations.
- There is
a struggle for survival because of limited resources available to individuals.
- The individuals
that posess adaptations that make them most fit to the environment are
more likely to survive than those not well suited to the environment.
- Survivors
reproduce and pass their successful adaptations on to their offspring.
Darwin shunned the
idea that individual organisms make changes, but embraced variation existing
within the populations as the key to surviving environmental change.
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