Given that the concepts and realities of Darwinian evolution are still challenged, albeit rarely by biologists, a succinct briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle is useful for people to have to hand.
That’s from the introduction to 15 Evolutionary Gems (pdf): a document produced by the scientific journal Nature to “illustrate the breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking”. The ‘evolutionary gems’ are in three categories:
- Gems From the Fossil Record
- Land-living ancestors of whales
- From water to land
- The origin of feathers
- The evolutionary history of teeth
- The origin of the vertebrate skeleton
- Gems From Habitats
- Natural selection in speciation
- Natural selection in lizards
- A case of co-evolution
- Differential dispersal in wild birds
- Selective survival in wild guppies
- Evolutionary history matters
- Gems From Molecular Processes
- Darwin’s Galapagos finches
- Microevolution meets macroevolution
- Toxin resistance in snakes and clams
- Variation versus stability