UNIT 7 BASIC CONCEPTS OF

EVOLUTION*
Contents
7.0 Introduction
7.1 Definition
7.2 Basic Concepts of Evolution
7.3 Speciation
7.3.1 Allopatric Speciation
7.3.2 Parapatric Speciation
7.3.3 Sympatric Speciation
7.3.4 Quantum Speciation
7.4 Irreversibility
7.5 Parallelism and Convergence
7.6 Adaptive Radiation
7.7 Extinction
7.8 Summary
7.9 References
7.10 Answer/Hints to Check Your Progress

Learning Objectives
After going through this unit, you would be able to understand the basic
concepts of evolution, i.e.:
 speciation;
 irreversibility;
 parallelism and convergence;
 adaptive radiation; and
 extinction.

7.0 INTRODUCTION
Physical Anthropology has two principal aspects of study: human evolution
and human variation. Human evolution is the evolution of Homo sapiens
from their ancestors whereas human variation refers to the differences that
exist among individual populations. Anthropologists are interested in
understanding both cultural and biological variation. Let us first understand
what evolution is as the present unit deals with basic concepts of evolution.
All life on earth originated through common descent, from a last universal
ancestor that lived approximately 3.5–3.8 billion years ago (Doolittle, 2000;
Glansdorff et al., 2008). ‘‘Repeated formation of new species (speciation),
change within species (anagenesis) and loss of species (extinction) throughout
the evolutionary history of life on earth can be inferred from shared sets
of morphological and biochemical traits, including shared DNA sequences.
These shared traits are more similar among species that share a more recent
* Prof. Rashmi Sinha, Faculty of Anthropology, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi 89
Understanding Human common ancestor and can be used to reconstruct a biological “tree of life”
Variation and Thoughts and
Theories of Evolution
based on evolutionary relationships (phylogenetics), using both existing
species and the fossil record. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been
shaped both by speciation and by extinction” (Evolution, n. d.). Although
more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on the planet are estimated
to be extinct (Stearns & Stearns, 2000), there are currently 10–14 million
species of life on earth (Miller & Spoolman, 2012).
According to Darwinian Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection organisms
become progressively adapted to their environments by accumulating beneficial
mutants, immediately strikes our mind. In fact when Darwin originated his
theory in the mid 19th century, the mechanism of inheritance and the nature
of heritable variations were unidentified; rather he slowly came to acknowledge
the Lamarckian view that the inheritance of acquired traits did play some
role in evolution. However, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection
as a ground for evolution was accepted into other branches of biology.
Huxley, Broca and Duckworth, recognized undoubtedly that, man’s place
in nature was amongst primates and held closest proximity to the great apes.

The study of human evolution advanced independently of human

genetics owing largely due to the discrepancy in time. 20th century
saw the rediscovery of Mendel’s work, explaining the concepts and
mechanism of inheritance; thus heralding the landmark Mendelian
genetics. Modern Genetic Theory propagates that evolution is result
of changes in gene (allele) frequencies between ancestral and
descendent populations. Natural selection, mutation, genetic drift
and migration are responsible for these changes. Despite the fact
that evolution is result of changes in gene, it is practically not viable
to measure directly the changes in gene frequencies. Hence,
evolution is also essentially viewed as changes in the morphology
of organisms through time; and the degree of morphological
similarities and differences have always been part of evolutionary
studies.

The understanding of human evolution continues and currently the Synthetic

Theory of Evolution states that evolution paved way to the fact that functional
adaptation of the diverse and variable forms of life, is through the continuous
production of variation and the action of natural selection.

7.1 DEFINITION
Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological
organisation, including the level of species, individual organisms and at the
of molecular level (Hall and Hallgrímsson, 2008). Evolution was first used
by Herbert Spencer (1852), an English philosopher, to denote the historical
development of life. Evolution is change and the changes within the organism
over a period of time is termed ‘micro-evolution’ whereas changes from
one being to the other i.e. transformation, is termed as ‘macro-evolution’.
Evolution can be defined in numerous ways; there is geological evolution
or evolution of planet earth, evolution of solar systems and the evolution
of the automobiles, radios and telephones etc, the changes involved in the
rise of human civilization or cultural evolution. Likewise ‘organic evolution’
is applied to the changes that have taken place in the living things, viz. plants
and animals. Charles Darwin (1859) defined evolution as “descent with
90 modification” i.e., closely related species resembling one another because
of their inheritance; and differing from one another because of the hereditary Basic Concepts of Evolution
differences accumulated during the separation of their ancestors. But
according to Dodson and Dodson (1976), evolution is the process by which
related populations diverge from one another, giving rise to new species (or
higher groups) while in 1951 Dobzhansky stated “evolution is the development
of dissimilarities between the ancestral and the descendant population”.

7.2 BASIC CONCEPTS OF EVOLUTION

Before mid 1800’s it was presumed that the diversity of life on earth was
due to God’s grace and perfection and whatever we saw was God’s creation
that naturally remain unchanged; this thought lead to the belief that the basis
of creation was its genesis only. Nevertheless evolutionary thought did evolve,
as fossil discoveries showed that life had changed over time, few scientists
considered that life had evolved with time and geological sciences provided
evidence that earth was exceedingly old. It was pre-Darwin biologists who
proposed mechanisms for evolution and finally Darwin and Wallace (1858;
1859) proposed a mechanism of evolution through their writings. There are
various evolutionary principles like speciation, irreversibility, parallelism and
convergence, adaptive radiation and extinction which we would be discussing.

7.3 SPECIATION
Speciation is the evolutionary process. Among diverse evolutionary principles,
speciation by which new biological species arise plays the most important
role. Orator F. Cook (1906) was the first to coin the term ‘speciation’ for
the splitting of lineages. Mayr (1970) defined speciation as the creation of
species. Speciation can also be defined as creation of two or more species
from one. Did it strike you that the complete evolution depends on the origin
of new populations from their ancestors? It gets very complicated to
understand many of them in detail due to lack of sufficient resources because
the origin is from their ancestors.
Let us first understand what is species? Species is one of the basic units
of biological classification and a taxonomic rank that is often defined as a
group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
Next, how does the speciation process occur? According to Mayr (1970),
true speciation or multiplication of species may occur by the following
agencies:
 Instantaneous speciation (through individuals) which could be genetical
or cytological, in partially or wholly sexual species.
 Gradual speciation (through populations) which could be geographical
speciation or sympatric speciation.
The course of speciation is achievable by four geographic modes in nature
on the basis of the extent to which speciating populations are isolated from
one another viz.
 allopatric,
 parapatric,
 sympatric and
 quantum speciation
A brief description of each is given below: 91
Understanding Human 7.3.1 Allopatric Speciation
Variation and Thoughts and
Theories of Evolution Allopatric (Greek word allos that means other + patrâ which means
fatherland) speciation also referred to as geographic speciation is a common
process by which new species arise. The population divides into two
geographically isolated populations by a geographic barrier like a mountain
range or river for terrestrial organisms, or a land mass for aquatic organisms
depending upon the habitat of the animal. These isolated populations then
experience genotypic and/or phenotypic deviation because of different
selective pressures.
7.3.2 Parapatric Speciation
This mode of speciation is typified when a small population enters into entirely
new habitat. But then there is only partial separation of the zones between
these two diverging populations and the individuals of each species may come
in contact or cross habitats from time to time, but reduced suitability of
the heterozygote leads to selection for behaviors or mechanisms that avert
their inter-breeding.
7.3.3 Sympatric Speciation
In sympatric speciation, two or more descendant species forms from a single
ancestor and occupy the same geographical locality. In this sort of speciation
even a small amount of gene flow tends to eradicate genetic differences
between parts of a population. There are number of examples of sympatric
speciation amongst the invertebrates, predominantly the insects that becomes
dependent on diverse host plants in the same area.
7.3.4 Quantum Speciation
Grant (1971) defined quantum speciation as “the budding off a new and
very different daughter species from a semi isolated peripheral population
of the ancestral species in a cross fertilization organism”. This takes place
through adaptive radiation by the discharge of genetic variability surrounded
by ecologic islands. Quantum speciation is swift; requiring only few
generations, in fact may consist of only one or few individuals. In quantum
speciation, genetic drift plays a key role.
Check Your Progress 1
1) What do you understand by evolution?
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2) What is Speciation? Describe different mechanisms of speciation with
suitable examples.
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 Basic Concepts of Evolution
7.4 IRREVERSIBILITY
Irreversibility is an important principle in the studies of primate evolution.
Louis Dollo, a French born Belgian paleontologist proposed in 1893 the
Principle of Irreversibility. Dollo’s law of Irreversibility or Dollo’s Law states
that an organism is unable to return, even partially to a previous stage, already
realized in the ranks of its ancestors. This means that a structure that changes
its form in evolution will not revert to its earlier form. So once an animal
has passed through a number of stages, a reversion, stage by stage, to the
original ancestral condition does not occur. Flying reptiles can be taken as
an illustration of this. After these reptiles became extinct, wings and
adaptation to an airborne way of life occurred in two other distinct lineages
– the birds and mammals.

7.5 PARALLELISM AND CONVERGENCE

Similar structures, similar adaptive relationships, or similar behaviors occurring
in dissimilar groups of animals are consequential of similar evolutionary
opportunities. The fundamental principle of evolutionary biology is that when
there is a close similarity in the total morphological pattern of two organisms,
there is a logically close phylogenetic relationship between them. Well,
dilemma that erupts with this phenomenon of similarity is whether such
similarities are examples of parallelism or convergence or whether they are
proof of evolutionary affinity between the organisms. Parallelism and
convergence imply that a close phylogenetic relationship does not exist.
 Parallelism is typically limited to the development of similar adaptive
features in animals that are related, such as, animals belonging to the
same order and also the parallel resemblances are, in all probability
the recognition of a genetic potential that is present in the entire group.
An example of this may occur when a species colonizes several new
areas which are isolated from, but environmentally similar to each other.
Similar selective pressures in these environments result in parallel
evolution among the traits that confer.
 Convergence on the other hand is the development of similarities in
adaptive relationships or structures in two animal species or major
groups that are not closely related. The repeated evolution of flying
is a typical example of convergent evolution, be it flying insects, birds
and bats, all evolved the capacity of flight independently; so what we
conclude that they have ‘converged’ on this useful trait. Let us
understand this with an example. The eye of the octopus has the same
complex structure as the human eye. However, substituting it for human
eye study would be very wrong although the two species diverged at
the time when animals had evolved into vertebrates and invertebrates.
It is herculean task to classify all cases of similarity as convergent or parallel
due to complexity. Let us understand this. There are two types of
photoreceptors in the vertebrate eye: rods and cones. Rods are highly
sensitive and need very little light to function though have little power of
discrimination; on the other side, cones are sensitive to higher intensities of
light and have high degree of discrimination of spatial relationships, colors
and textures. Rods have been found in the eyes of many nocturnal vertebrates
such as owls, bats and lorises and of those that live in dim light such as 93
Understanding Human whales, cats and some fishes. The difficulty is, in which of these animals
Variation and Thoughts and
Theories of Evolution are the rods convergent and in which there is parallel development?
Therefore, comes the perception of how we define parallel and convergent.
As suggestive of the nomenclature, it is convergent when the rods in each
of the various animals noted may have evolutionary derivations from different
structures and it is parallel if they are derived from the same parts of the
basic vertebrate eye. The Old World Monkeys and New World Monkeys
present an excellent example of parallelism between groups living today, since
they appear to have evolved in parallel from a prosimian ancestor that most
likely lived at least 35 million years ago. An example for convergent evolution
is the brachiation, locomotion by swinging arm over arm through the trees
in some monkeys of both Old World and New World and in certain apes.
The terms homologous and analogous are frequently used to portray
particular structures in animals. Homologous structures are those that are
related by evolutionary descent and divergence; e.g. the wing of a bat and
the forelimb of a monkey are homologous – they are descendent from same
ancestral structure, whereas, the wing of a bat and the wing of a butterfly
are analogous. Though they may have similar functions and similar forms,
but then they are not related by descent from the same ancestral structure.
Perhaps thinking of parallelism as homologous evolution and convergence
as analogous evolution would help us distinguish the two processes.

7.6 ADAPTIVE RADIATION

In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms
diversify rapidly into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change
in the environment makes new resources available, creates new challenges
and opens environmental niches (Larsen, 2011; Schulter, 2000). “Four
features can be used to identify an adaptive radiation:
 Common ancestry of component species: specifically a recent ancestry.
Note that this is not the same as a monophyly in which all descendants
of a common ancestor are included.
 A phenotype-environment correlation: A significant association between
environments and the morphological and physiological traits used to
exploit those environments.
 Trait utility: The performance or fitness advantages of trait values in their
corresponding environments.
 Rapid speciation: Presence of one or more bursts in the emergence of
new species around the time that ecological and phenotypic divergence
is underway.” (Adaptive Radiation, n. d.)
When there is a rapid increase in numbers and kinds of any evolving group
of animals facilitated by environmental changes and utilizing a number of new
places in the planetary living space because of adaptive radiation, it may
result in the evolving group of animals be it at the level of a species, a
genus and a super family. These places in the environment are called niches
and eco-niches. But, according to Simpson (1953) adaptive radiation is the
rapid proliferation of new species from a single ancestral group. In adaptive
radiation, species evolves into progressively dissimilar organisms. Sometimes
the descendants of a single species evolves to take advantage of many
94 different environments and opportunities, now this rapid change in the external
environment may result in the formation of different animals to grow from Basic Concepts of Evolution
a single ancestral form. The evolution of a trait that opens up many new
possibilities may also give rise to adaptive radiation. Let us understand this
principle of evolution by the history of the mammals.

With the geological revolution that marked the end of the Mesozoic
era (the age of the reptiles) and the start of the Tertiary period of the
Cenozoic Era, the earlier steady climates became unsettled as a result
dinosaurs (a varied group of animals from taxonomic, morphological and
ecological standpoints) became extinct as they did not adapt themselves
to the new environment.


Whereas the mammals evolved in many distinct lines e.g. the rodents
specialized for gnawing, the carnivores for hunting, the hoofed animals
for grazing, the primates and sloths took to the trees, the whales, seals
and sea cows adapted for life in the oceans and the bat took to the
air.


Additionally, every mammalian order consecutively gave rise to sub lines
that occupied new environments by acquiring new form of life. Many
of today’s mammals are distinctly different from their primitive common
ancestors to the Paleocene epoch.

The spread of arboreal primates, the old world monkeys, into trees of the
tropical forests is an example of an adaptive radiation. Adaptive radiation
is said to have occurred when a group of organisms adapt into a planetary
living space consequent to the changes in the group’s relationship to
environment, which naturally was not possible earlier. These altered relationships
can be inferred from the lines of verification such as the morphology of
the fossils and comparative studies of the living forms which are in all
likelihood descendants of these fossils.
Besides, various orders and sub-orders of mammals have undergone more
differentiation, dividing or ‘radiating’ into types adapted to different habitats.
Hence, all the main groups of primates today embrace species with distinct
dietary habits. Therefore, insect eating, seed eating, leaf eating and more
or less omnivorous genera reappear in different branches of the primates
as these branches diverge more or less from the ancestral line. This adaptive
radiation within the branches is thus accompanied by parallelism between
the branches and by convergence of adaptations towards those of some
non primate lines.
Darwin’s finches are the famous example where adaptive radiation is seen.
Patchy land is time and again a prime location for adaptive radiation to
occur, is argued by the evolutionary biologists. The differences in geography
all through disjointed landscapes are thought to promote such diversification
in species. Darwin’s finches also inhabit the patchy or fragmented land of
the Galapagos Islands and are diversified into many different species which
differ in ecology and morphology, specifically the size and shapes of their
beaks. 95
Understanding Human
Variation and Thoughts and
Theories of Evolution

Fig. 1: Adaptive radiation in Galapagos finches

Source: [Link]

It was adaptive radiation that paved way for the evolution of different beaks
which facilitated the access to appropriate, different food and resources.
Depending upon their beak would be their food e.g. those with short beaks
are better adapted to eating seeds on the ground, those with thin, sharp
beaks eat insects and those with long beaks use their beaks to probe for
food inside cacti. Accordingly with such specializations in the beaks, seven
or more species of finches are able to inhabit the same environments without
competition or lack of resources killing several off. Consequently, these
morphological differences in beak size and shape brought about by adaptive
radiation allow the island diversification to continue.

7.7 EXTINCTION
Extinction is when an organism or of a group of organisms, that is, a species
ceases to exist. It is through evolution that a new species is formed by
the process of speciation. The relationship between animals and their
ecological niches has been firmly established (Sahney et al., 2010). Extinction
is the disappearance of an animal group, such as species, from the
evolutionary record due to the death of the last individual of that species.
It is not a bizarre occurrence, because species are produced by speciation
when new organism evolve and increase when they find suitable ecological
niche and when they are no longer able to cope with the new changing
conditions, they disappear through extinction. Practically all animal and plant
species that have lived on earth are now extinct and extinction appears to
be the eventual destiny of all species. Hence, when there are no existing
individuals to reproduce and carry on next generation extinction then becomes
inevitable. The species also become functionally extinct when very few
96
individuals who are unable to reproduce that may be due to age, poor health, Basic Concepts of Evolution
large distant or even lack of individuals of both the sexes, survive. The
extinctions are constant all through the history of life, even if the rate of
extinction elevates in occasional mass extinction events. Extinction of species
may be due to the negative role of environmental selection in evolution
wherein the species may develop a way of life such that a change in the
environment is unable to support its survival or one species may become
extinct when it is changed into another, resulting in species being a segment
of a continuous, progressive evolutionary lineage. Therefore, the species of
one time period in which this lineage exists is the ancestor of the subsequent
species in the next time period and the ancestral species become extinct
through the course by which it is transformed into its descendants. The early
Pleistocene hominids, australopithecines are extinct; nevertheless it is probable
that some direct descendants of australopithecine genetic material exist in
modern Homo sapiens. The Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, during
which the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, is the most well-known, but
the earlier Permian–Triassic extinction event was even more severe, with
approximately 96 percent of species driven to extinction. The Holocene
extinction event is an ongoing mass extinction coupled with humanity’s
expansion across the globe over the past few thousand years. Human
activities are now the crucial cause of the continuing extinction event; global
warming may additionally hasten it in the future. The position of extinction
in evolution is not very well understood and may depend on which type
of extinction is considered. The foundation of the incessant “low-level”
extinction events, which constitute the greater part of extinctions, may be
the result of competition between species for limited resources. If one species
can out-compete another, this could generate species selection, with the fitter
species surviving and the other species driven to extinction. The sporadic
mass extinctions are also important, but instead of acting as a selective force,
they radically reduce diversity in a non-specific manner and promote bursts
of rapid evolution and speciation in survivors.
7.7.1 Pseudoextinction
Extinction of a parent species where daughter species or subspecies are
still alive is also called pseudoextinction. In other cases, species have
produced no new variants, or none that are able to survive the parent species’
extinction. Many of prehistoric extinct species have evolved into new species;
for example the extinct Eohippus (an ancient horse like animal) was the
ancestor of several existing species including the horse, the zebra and the
donkey. The Eohippus itself is no more, but its descendants live on. It is
therefore said to be pseudoextinct.
Check Your Progress 2
3) Write a short note on irreversibility, parallelism and convergence and
adaptive radiation.
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............................................................................................................ 97
Understanding Human 4) What is extinction? Critically discuss this evolutionary process with
Variation and Thoughts and
Theories of Evolution examples.
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7.8 SUMMARY
Evolution simply means change. Organic evolution is the study of changes
that have taken place in living things i.e., plants and animals. According to
the progress of modern genetic theory, evolution is now considered as
changes in gene (allele) frequencies between ancestral and decedent
populations. But then it is practically unattainable task to measure directly
the changes in gene frequencies. Hence, evolution is also essentially viewed
as changes in the morphology of organisms through time. Analyses of degrees
of morphological similarities and differences have always been focus of
evolutionary studies. The origin of discontinuities between animal
populations, that is speciation, is a foremost issue of biologists. After the
foundation of the development of genetic concepts, today we are possessors
of the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, which states that evolution led to the
functional adaptation of the diverse and variable forms of life through the
continuous production of variation and the action of natural selection. While
understanding the evolution, the basic concepts of evolution like speciation,
irreversibility, parallelism and convergence, adaptive radiation and extinction
are important.

7.9 REFERENCES
Adaptive Radiation (n. d.). In Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed
on: 2018, June 10. Retrieved From [Link]
Adaptive_radiation

Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural

Selection. London: Murray, 247, 1859.

Doolittle, W. F. (2000). Uprooting the Tree of Life. Scientific

American, 282(2), 90-95.

Evolution (n. d.). In Wikipedia: The free Encyclopedia. Accessed on: 2018,
July 03. Retrieved From [Link]

Glansdorff, N., Xu, Y., & Labedan, B. (2008). The Last Universal Common
Ancestor: Emergence, Constitution and Genetic Legacy of an Elusive
Forerunner. Biology Direct, 3(1), 29.

Grant, V. (1971). Plant Speciation. 435 pp. New York and London:
Columbia University Press.

Hall, B., & Hallgrímsson, B. (2008). Strickberger’s Evolution. Jones &

Bartlett Learning.
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Larsen, C. S. (2011). Our Origins: Discovering Physical Anthropology. Basic Concepts of Evolution
(2 ed.). Norton & Company.

Mayr, E. (1970). Populations, Species and Evolution: an Abridgment of

Animal Species and Evolution (Vol. 19). Harvard University Press.
Miller, G. T., & Spoolman, S. (2012). Environmental Science. Cengage
Learning.
Sahney, S., Benton, M. J., & Ferry, P. A. (2010). Links between Global
Taxonomic Diversity, Ecological Diversity and the Expansion of Vertebrates
on Land. Biology Letters, rsbl20091024.
Schluter, D. (2000). The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation. OUP Oxford.
Simpson, G. G. (1953). The Major Features of Evolution. Columbia, New
York.
Stearns, B. P., & Stearns, S. C. (2000). Watching, from the Edge of
Extinction. Yale University Press.
Wallace, A. R. (1858, August). On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart
Indefinitely from the Original Type. In Proceedings of the Linnean Society
of London (Vol. 3, No. 1858, pp. 53-62).

7.10 ANSWER/HINTS TO CHECK YOUR

PROGRESS
1) Evolution, also known as descent with modification, is the change
in heritable phenotype traits of biological populations over successive
generations. (Refer to the section 7.1).
2) Speciation is the evolutionary process and whether genetic drift is a
minor or major contributor to speciation is the subject matter of much
ongoing debate. Among diverse evolutionary principles, speciation by
which new biological species arise plays a most important role.
There are two mechanism of speciation: Instantaneous speciation and
Gradual speciation (Refer to the section 7.3).
3) Irreversibility
Irreversibility is an important principle in the studies of primate
evolution. Dollo’s law of Irreversibility or Dollos Law states that an
organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already
realized in the ranks of its ancestors. This means that a structure that
changes its form in evolution will not revert to its earlier form.
Parallelism and Convergence
Parallelism and convergence imply that a close phylogenetic relationship
does not exist. Parallelism is typically limited to the development of
similar adaptive features in animals that are related, such as animals
belonging to the same order and also the parallel resemblances are
in all probability the recognition of a genetic potential that is present
99
Understanding Human in the entire group. Convergence on the other hand is the development Bas
Variation and Thoughts and
Theories of Evolution of similarities in adaptive relationships or structures in two animal
species or major groups that are not closely related.
Adaptive Radiation
In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms
diversify rapidly into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a
change in the environment makes new resources available, creates new
challenges and opens environmental niches.
4) Extinction
Extinction is when an organism or of a group of organism that is species
ceases to exist. It is through evolution that a new species is formed
by the process of speciation. Extinction is the disappearance of an
animal group, such as species, from the evolutionary record due to
the death of the last individual of that species. (For further refer to
section 7.7).

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