Index of evolutionary biology articles

Charles Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron, c. 1868

Index of Evolutionary Biology Articles

Evolutionary biology is the study of the origin, development, and changes in species over time, including the processes that have given rise to the diversity of life on Earth. This index aims to organize and provide easy access to a wide range of articles related to evolutionary biology. The topics covered range from fundamental concepts and theories to the specific mechanisms and phenomena that underpin evolutionary change.

A

• Adaptive radiation - The rapid evolution of diversely adapted species from a common ancestor upon introduction to new environmental opportunities.
• Allele frequency - The relative frequency of alleles (variants of a gene) in a population.
• Allopatric speciation - The process of speciation that occurs when biological populations of the same species become isolated from each other to an extent that prevents or interferes with genetic interchange.

B

• Biological evolution - The process through which the characteristics of organisms change over successive generations, by means of genetic variation and natural selection.
• Bottleneck effect - A sharp reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events or human activities, leading to changes in the gene pool and a decrease in genetic diversity.

C

• Cladistics - A method of classification of animals and plants according to the proportion of measurable characteristics that they have in common.
• Common descent - The concept that all living organisms have a common ancestor from which they descended.
• Convergent evolution - The process whereby organisms not closely related independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches.

D

• Darwinism - A theory of organic evolution claiming that new species arise and are perpetuated by natural selection.
• Directional selection - A mode of natural selection in which an extreme phenotype is favored over other phenotypes, causing the allele frequency to shift over time in the direction of that phenotype.

E

• Endemic species - Species that are native to and found only within a limited area.
• Evolutionary developmental biology - A field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer the ancestral relationships between them and how developmental processes evolved.
• Extinction - The end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species.

F

• Fitness (biology) - The genetic contribution of an individual to the next generation's gene pool relative to the average for the population, usually measured by the number of offspring or close kin that survive to reproductive age.
• Founder effect - The loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population.

G

• Gene flow - The transfer of genetic variation from one population to another.
• Genetic drift - The change in the frequency of an existing gene variant (allele) in a population due to random sampling of organisms.
• Genotype - The genetic constitution of an individual organism.

H

• Habitat fragmentation - A process by which habitat loss results in the division of large, continuous habitats into smaller, more isolated remnants.
• Heterozygote advantage - A situation in which heterozygous individuals have a higher fitness than homozygous individuals.

I

• Intraspecific competition - Competition among members of the same species for limited resources.
• Isolation (evolutionary biology) - The process by which two populations become separated by geographical, behavioral, genetic, or reproductive factors.

J

• Junk DNA - Non-coding DNA sequences that do not contain genes and have no known function.

K

• Kin selection - A strategy in evolution that favors the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction.

L

• Life history theory - A theory that explains how evolutionary processes shape organisms' reproductive strategies, growth, and survival.

M

• Macroevolution - Evolutionary change above the species level, encompassing the origin of new taxonomic groups, adaptive radiation, and mass extinction.
• Microevolution - Evolutionary change within a species or small group of organisms, especially over a short period.

N

• Natural selection - The differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype.

O

• Orthogenesis - The hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to change, in a unilinear fashion, towards ever greater complexity.

P

• Phenotype - The set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.
• Phylogenetics - The study of the evolutionary history and relationships among individuals or groups of organisms.

Q

• Quantitative genetics - The study of the genetic mechanisms of continuous phenotypic traits - that is, traits that can be measured along a gradient and are influenced by multiple genes and environmental factors.

R

• Reproductive isolation - A collection of evolutionary mechanisms, behaviors and physiological processes critical for speciation.

S

• Speciation - The evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species.
• Survival of the fittest - A phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection.

T

• Taxonomy (biology) - The science of naming, defining, and classifying groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics.

U

• Uniformitarianism - The principle that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.

V

• Variation (biology) - The differences among individuals in a population.

W

• Wallace Line - A faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace that separates the ecozones of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia.

X

• Xenobiology - A form of biology that is not yet fully understood and relates to hypothetical organisms that might live in environments radically different from those on Earth.

Y

• Y-chromosome analysis - A technique used in the study of evolutionary biology to examine the direct paternal lineage.

Z

• Zoogeography - The branch of the science of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution of animal species.