natural selection - mechanism for evolution 

• individuals w/ better traits tend to produce more surviving offspring
• Lamarck’s theory - inheritance of acquired characteristics
  • individuals pass on body/behavior changes acquired throughout lives
• Darwin ’s theory - inheritance of preexisting genetic differences
• population genetics - study of gene properties in populations

evidence for evolution - proven by modern day evidence

• correspondence between finch beaks and food supply
  • Peter/Rosemary Grant - studied ground finch, found that frequency of a certain beak size change predictably as food supply differed
• pollution after 1850 allowed dark colored moths to survive more easily than light-colored ones
  • increase in number of dark colored moths after industrial revolution
  • industrial melanism - darker organisms prevail over lighter ones in industrial areas
• artificial selection in agriculture - differences due to selection for favorable traits
  • current crops look far different from ancestors
  • corn can no longer survive by itself in the wild
• fossil record - absolute dating (w/ radioactive decay) has replaced relative dating (w/ rock strata)
  • fossil record (especially for vertebrates) show how they’ve changed/evolved
• anatomical record - w/o evolution, it’s hard to explain many things in biology
  • homologous structures - structures w/ different functions, derived from same body part
  • imperfect structures - like vertebrate eye, don’t function as efficiently as a result of evolution
  • vestigial structures - have no function, but resembles structures of ancestors
  • analogous structures - due to convergent evolution, has similar functions but derived from different body parts