Endless Forms Most Beautiful: An Introduction to Evolution

Along the coastal portion of the Namib desert in southwestern Africa, lives a beetle, Onymacris unguicularis. In this harsh climate, unguicularis must stand on its head to obtain water from fog blowing across the dunes. Small drops of moisture collect on the beetle's abdomen and run down into its mouth from this position.

This interesting evolutionary adaptation is merely one example of the brilliance of nature and the ability of species to adapt to survive even in extreme environments. It shows the diversity that results from the variety of climates that exist on the planet. The "headstander" beetle is in fact a member of an amazingly diverse group - over 350,000 types of beetle. Beetles actually account for 1 in every 5 known species. All of these beetles share similar features; three pairs of legs, two pairs of wings, and a hard exoskeleton. But they also differ from one another.

The headstander beetle and its relatives illustrate three key observations about life:

• the radical ways in which organisms are suited directly to their individual environments
• the unity of life (many shared characteristics)
• the diversity of life (millions of species, for example, of insects)

Over one hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin wrote a hypothesis for these three broad observations. He first published his ideas in his book The Origin of Species. This sparked a revolution in evolutionary biology, and a quest by all scientists across disciplines to either bolster or reject this radical hypothesis.

What ensued was a massive accumulation of evidence for the process of evolution, and no evidence contradicting it. 

Darwin's original hypothesis has now graduated into the ranks of scientific theory, surrounded by others such as the Theory of Gravity, Heliocentric Theory, and The Germ Theory of Disease.

It is essential the evolution be understood, because it continues to have an impact on our lives; the food we eat (GMOs), our rapidly changing climate (whether from planetary forces or human causation), and our health (with the use of pharmaceuticals and drug-resistant bacteria). Evolution is critical to modern medicine, chemistry, physics, and of course biology.

It is the purpose of this blog to fully educate on exactly what evolution is and what it isn't.

To set the stage, the next post will discuss Darwin's lifelong quest to explain the adaptations, unity and diversity of what he called life's "endless forms most beautiful."