Introduction to Evolutionary Thought and Natural Selection

Vocabulary flashcards covering pre-Darwinian evolutionary thinkers, early geological theories, Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms, and key ecological terms.

Essentialism

The pre-Darwinian dominant concept that life forms are fixed, unchanging, and remain in their distinct entity over time.

Scala naturae

The pre-Darwinian idea of a structural hierarchy encompassing both living and nonliving things, including minerals at the very bottom.

Linnaeus

The scientist who introduced binomial nomenclature (genus and species) to establish a framework for cataloging organisms.

Leclerc

A thinker who recognized that differences between related species living in different regions reflect their environments, though his idea that organisms moved and then changed was incorrect.

Lamarck

An early evolutionary thinker famous for transformism and the incorrect idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Transformism

Lamarck's theory that species lineages persist forever and change over time without undergoing speciation or sharing common ancestry.

Inheritance of acquired characteristics

Lamarck's idea that physical changes or traits developed by an organism during its lifetime through use or effort are passed on to its offspring.

Cuvier

A proponent of essentialism who established the concept of extinction and argued that fossils represent distinct species rather than earlier forms of modern organisms.

Extant

A term used to describe species or organisms that are currently living and present on the planet today.

Extinct

A term used to describe species or organisms that no longer exist on the planet.

Gradualism

The geological principle introduced by Hutton stating that the Earth changes slowly and constantly over long periods.

Uniformitarianism

The geological concept expanded by Lyall stating that the slow processes shaping the Earth in the past are still actively occurring today.

Natural selection

The primary mechanism for evolution proposed by Charles Darwin to explain how species adapt and change over time.

Descent with modification

Darwin's description of the generational outcome of evolution, characterized by slight changes accumulating through time.

Common rock pigeon

The single wild ancestor species from which all domesticated pigeon varieties originate.

Beak depth

The measurement of a bird's beak from top to bottom that dictates its functional dexterity, such as cracking seeds or catching insects.

Malthus

An essayist whose work on human population growth outstripping food production introduced the core principles of biological competition.

Biological competition

The struggle that occurs among organisms when population size outpaces the availability of limited environmental resources.