Date: March 9, 2018

Name: Honey Jyl Ducusin Grade and Section: XII Andromeda

Teacher: Shirley D. Regalado Subject: Biology II

TERM PAPER: EVOLUTION AND DIVERSITY

Theories of Evolution

Nowadays, scientists are saying that evolution is due to diversity. They study the
evolution of earth in order to understand the phenomenon that is naturally present in the Earth.
Also, they seek to understand and become knowledgeable and to make us realize that we
should be proactive on ourselves to internalize how life forms evolve throughout the Earth’s life
time.

Life Sciences attempts to untie the living things mysteries from the working of protein
‘machines’, to the growth of organism from a single cell to the majesty and intricacy of whole
ecosystem. Questions about life sciences are as diverse and fascinating as life itself like? When
the interpretation of genetic information does take place? How ecosystem changes due to
climate? What can human genetic variation tell us about the history of human evolution and
migration? Evolution is the change in heritable traits of biological populations over successive
generations. Evolutionary processes give us arise to diversity at every biological organization
level. All life on earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal ancestor. In the
mid-19th century, Charles Darwin formulated the scientific theory of evolution by natural
selection, while in the early 20th century the modern evolutionary synthesis integrated classical
genetics with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection through the discipline of
population genetics.

In addition, evolution is a cornerstone of modern science, accepted as one of the most

reliably established of all facts and theories of science, based on evidence not just from the
biological sciences but also from anthropology, psychology, astrophysics, chemistry, geology,
physics, mathematics, and other scientific disciplines, as well as behavioral and social sciences.

These days, the most accepted theory of life on Earth is evolution, and there is a vast
amount of evidence supporting this theory. However, this was not always the case. Evolution
can be described as a change in species over time. Dinosaur fossils are significant evidence of
evolution and of past life on Earth. Before taking into consideration that how life began, first of
all we understand the term organic evolution. It is naturally occurring and beneficial change that
produces rising and inheritable complication. If the offspring of one form of life had a different
and improved set of vital organs then this is called macroevolution, but the microevolution does
not increase the complexity. By one or more mutation only size, shape and color are altered
according to Theubus (2009). Microevolution can be thought of as horizontal change, while
macroevolution would involve vertical beneficial change in complexity. So the combination of
microevolution and time will not produce macroevolution.

Evolutionists have the same opinion that microevolution takes place. Since the start of
history a minor change has been observed. But become aware of how frequently evolutionists
give confirmation for microevolution to hold up macroevolution. It is macroevolution which
requires new abilities and rising complication, resulting from new genetic information and is the
center of the creation-evolution argument according to Maher (2005).

Microevolution refers to the changes in allele frequencies within a single population.

Allele frequencies in a population may change due to four fundamental forces of evolution:
Natural Selection, Genetic Drift, Mutations and Gene Flow. Mutations are the ultimate source of
new alleles in a gene pool.Two of the most relevant mechanisms of evolutionary change are:
Natural Selection and Genetic Drift. One of the main controversial issues in population genetics
is concerned with the relative importance of both mechanisms in determining evolutionary
changes. Natural selection usually predominates in large populations whereas genetic drift does
so in small ones.

To understand natural selection, it leads to an evolutionary change when some

individuals with certain traits in a population have a higher survival and reproductive rate than
others and pass on these inheritable genetic features to their offspring. Evolution acts through
natural selection whereby reproductive and genetic qualities that prove advantageous to
survival prevail into future generations. The cumulative effects of natural selection process have
giving rise to populations that have evolved to succeed in specific environments. Natural
selection operates by differential reproductive success of individuals.

Also, random drift consists of random fluctuations in the frequency of appearance of a

gene, usually, in a small population. The process may cause gene variants to disappear
completely, thereby reducing genetic variability. In contrast to natural selection, environmental
or adaptive pressures do not drive changes due to genetic drift. The effect of genetic drift is
larger in small populations and smaller in large populations.

In the population genetics, “Gene Flow” or also known as gene migration refers to the
transfer of genes from the gene pool of one population to another. Gene flow may change the
frequency and/or the range of alleles in the populations due to the migration of individuals or
gametes that can reproduce in a different population. The introduction of new alleles increases
variability within a population and allows for new combinations of traits. Horizontal gene transfer
also known as lateral gene transfer, is a process in which an organism acquires genetic material
from another one by asexual means. It is already known that HGT has played a major role in the
evolution of many organisms like bacteria. In plant populations, the great majority of cases
linked to this mechanism have to do with the movement of DNA between mitochondrial
genomes. Horizontal gene transfer is a widespread phenomenon in prokaryotes, but the
prevalence and implications of this mechanism in the evolution of multicellular eukaryotes is still
unclear. Nevertheless, many investigations on HGT in plants have been carried out during the
last years trying to reveal the underlying patterns, magnitude and importance of this mechanism
in plant populations as well as its influence on agriculture and the ecosystem.
 Date: March 9, 2018
Name: Honey Jyl Ducusin Grade and Section: XII Andromeda

Teacher: Shirley D. Regalado Subject: Biology II

TERM PAPER: EVOLUTION AND DIVERSITY

History of Life on Earth

When we think about history, we may think of learning about old heroic time, pirates
sailing in the Caribbean, wars, and monarch dynasties. However, the history of the Earth
compared to these events are unfortunately the most recent, we are talking millions of years
here, and not just 1780’s or 16 B.C. While these history are important as well as the history of
the Earth, we must focus and understand that Earth has been a history since 4.6 millions of
years ago.

The history of the Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms
evolved since life appeared on the planet, until the present. Earth formed about 4.6 billion years
ago and there is evidence that life appeared as early as 4.1 billion years ago. The similarities
among all present-day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all
known species have diverged through the process of evolution. More than 99 percent of all
species, amounting to over five billion species that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be
extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million,
of which about 1.9 million are estimated to have been named and 1.6 million documented in a
central database to date. More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species
are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described.

The earliest identified organisms were minute and relatively featureless, and their fossils
look like small rods, which are very difficult to tell apart from structures that arise through abiotic
physical processes. The oldest undisputed evidence of life on Earth, interpreted as fossilized
bacteria, dates to 3 billion years ago .Other finds in rocks dated to about 3.5 billion years ago
have been interpreted as bacteria, with geochemical evidence also seeming to show the
presence of life 3.8 billion years ago. However, these analyses were closely scrutinized, and
non-biological processes were found which could produce all of the "signatures of life" that had
been reported. While this does not prove that the structures found had a non-biological origin,
they cannot be taken as clear evidence for the presence of life. Geochemical signatures from
rocks deposited 3.4 billion years ago have been interpreted as evidence for life, although these
statements have not been thoroughly examined by critics.

Biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal
ancestor, because it would be virtually impossible that two or more separate lineages could
have independently developed the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living
organisms. Life on Earth is based on carbon and water. Carbon provides stable frameworks for
complex chemicals and can be easily extracted from the environment, especially from carbon
dioxide. There is no other chemical element whose properties are similar enough to carbon's to
be called an analogue; silicon, the element directly below carbon on the periodic table, does not
form very many complex stable molecules, and because most of its compounds are water-
insoluble, it would be more difficult for organisms to extract. The elements boron and
phosphorus have more complex chemistries, but suffer from other limitations relative to carbon.
Water is an excellent solvent and has two other useful properties: the fact that ice floats enables
aquatic organisms to survive beneath it in winter; and its molecules have electrically negative
and positive ends, which enables it to form a wider range of compounds than other solvents
can. Other good solvents, such as ammonia, are liquid only at such low temperatures that
chemical reactions may be too slow to sustain life, and lack water's other advantages.

There are all sorts of ways to reconstruct the history of life on Earth. Pinning down when
specific events occurred is often tricky, though. For this, biologists depend mainly on dating the
rocks in which fossils are found, and by looking at the “molecular clocks” in the DNA of living
organisms. There are problems with each of these methods. The fossil record is like a movie
with most of the frames cut out. Because it is so incomplete, it can be difficult to establish
exactly when particular evolutionary changes happened.

Modern genetics allows scientists to measure how different species are from each other
at a molecular level, and thus to estimate how much time has passed since a single lineage split
into different species. Confounding factors rack up for species that are very distantly related,
making the earlier dates more uncertain. These difficulties mean that the dates in the timeline
should be taken as approximate. As a general rule, they become more uncertain the further
back along the geological timescale we look. Dates that are very uncertain are marked with a
question mark.

3.8 billion years ago? This is our current “best guess” for the beginning of life on Earth. It
is distinctly possible that this date will change as more evidence comes to light. The first life may
have developed in undersea alkaline vents, and was probably based on RNA rather than
DNA.at some point far back in time, a common ancestor gave rise to two main groups of life &
colon which are bacteria and archaea. 2.4 billion years ago. The “great oxidation event”.
Supposedly, the poisonous waste produced by photosynthetic cyanobacteria – oxygen – starts
to build up in the atmosphere. Dissolved oxygen makes the iron in the oceans “rust” and sink to
the seafloor, forming striking banded iron formations. Recently, though, some researchers have
challenged this idea. There is some evidence for an earlier date for the beginning of
photosynthesis, but it has been called into question. 2 billion years ago. Eukaryotic cells evolved
when one simple cell engulfed another, and the two lived together, more or less amicably – an
example of “endosymbiosis”. The engulfed bacteria eventually become mitochondria, which
provide eukaryotic cells with energy. The last common ancestor of all eukaryotic cells had
mitochondria and had also developed sexual reproduction.

We can see that the Earth's history is broken into three eons: Archean, Proterozoic and
Phanerozoic. Some of these eons are separated by mass extinction that is, a large loss of life
while others are separated by a great increase in the diversity of life. These decreases and
increases in diversity may have been caused by different things but, nonetheless, they help
define periods within Earth's history.