Evolutionary biology

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(Redirected from Evolutionary biologist)

Evolutionary biology is a subfield of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time, i.e. their evolution. One who studies evolutionary biology is known as an evolutionary biologist, or, less frequently, evolutionist.

Evolutionary biology is an interdisciplinary field because it includes scientists from many traditional taxonomically-oriented disciplines. For example, it generally includes scientists who may have a specialist training in particular organisms such as mammalogy, ornithology, or herpetology but use those organisms as systems to answer general questions in evolution. It also generally includes paleontologists who use fossils to answer questions about the mode and tempo of evolution, as well as theoreticians in areas such as population genetics and evolutionary theory. In the 1990s developmental biology made a re-entry into evolutionary biology from its initial exclusion from the modern synthesis through the study of evolutionary developmental biology.

Its findings feed strongly into the new disciplines that study mankind's sociocultural evolution and evolutionary psychology during the millennia before the invention of agriculture. Evolutionary biology's frameworks of ideas and conceptual tools are now finding application in the study of a range of subjects from computing to nanotechnology.

Artificial life is a subfield of Bioinformatics that attempts to model, or even recreate, the evolution of organisms as described by evolutionary biology. Usually this is done through mathematics and computer models.

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History

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Evolutionary biology as an academic discipline in its own right emerged as a result of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a significant number of universities had departments that specifically included the term evolutionary biology in their titles. In the United States, as a result of the rapid growth of molecular and cell biology, many universities have split (or aggregated) their biology departments into molecular and cell biology-style departments and ecology and evolutionary biology-style departments (which often have subsumed older departments in paleontology, zoology and the like).

Microbiology has recently developed into an evolutionary discipline. It was originally ignored due to the paucity of morphological traits and the lack of a species concept in microbiology. Now, evolutionary researchers are taking advantage our extensive understanding of microbial physiology, the ease of microbial genomics, and the quick generation time of some microbes to answer evolutionary questions. Similar features have led to progress in viral evolution, particularly for bacteriophage.

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Notable evolutionary biologists

Template:Main Notable contributors to evolutionary biology include:

Evolutionary biologists known primarily for their science popularization:

Notable popularizers of evolution whose research isn't primarily concerned with evolutionary biology include:

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Bibliography

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Textbooks

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Notable monographs and other works

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Topics in evolutionary biology

General subfields within biology
Anatomy | Astrobiology | Biochemistry | Bioinformatics | Botany | Cell biology | Ecology | Developmental biology | Evolutionary biology | Genetics | Genomics | Marine biology | Human biology | Microbiology | Molecular biology | Origin of life | Paleontology | Parasitology | Pathology | Physiology | Taxonomy | Zoology
Basic topics in evolutionary biology(edit)
Processes of evolution: evidence - macroevolution - microevolution - speciation
Mechanisms: selection - genetic drift - gene flow - mutation - phenotypic plasticity
Modes: anagenesis - catagenesis - cladogenesis
History: History of evolutionary thought - Charles Darwin - The Origin of Species - modern evolutionary synthesis
Subfields: population genetics - ecological genetics - human evolution - molecular evolution - phylogenetics - systematics - evo-devo
List of evolutionary biology topics | Timeline of evolution | Timeline of human evolution
cs:Evoluční biologie

de:Evolutionsbiologie es:Biología evolutiva fr:Biologie de l'évolution ko:진화생물학 is:Þróunarlíffræði mk:Еволутивна биологија pt:Biologia evolutiva zh:进化生物学

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