Charles Darwin's Theory Of Natural Selection

What is evolution?

- The process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth or the gradual development of something.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin was the first person to consider the theory of Evolution. He believed that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor. Everything from birds to bananas to flowers. Darwin’s general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic or undirected “decent with modification”. Simply put complex creatures evolved from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time. Darwin believed that a random genetic mutation occurs within an organism’s genetic code, and the beneficial mutations are preserved, or kept, as they aid the organism’s survival – a process Darwin named Natural Selection. As the beneficial mutations are preserved they are then passed on to then next generation and so on, until the beneficial mutations accumulate and the result is an entirely different organism, and are no longer a variation of the original but are an entirely different creature.

Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype; it is a key mechanism of evolution. Natural selection was invented and considered by Charles Darwin. Today natural selection is one of the basic mechanisms of evolution, mutation, migration and genetic drift are also quite predominate in our knowledge of evolution. However Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection is often misunderstood. Natural selection works in four steps, to help explain imagine a population of beetles. 1st. there is variation in traits; e.g. Some beetles are green whilst others are