Charles Darwin's 'Remarkable Creatures'

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Remarkable Creatures chronicles the stories of landmark scientific events and the biologists behind them- following the creation of Darwin’s unprecedented theory of natural evolution. The events mentioned in the book were all centered around the concepts of evolution and the origin of species. The first part of the book details the journeys of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, young collectors turned into naturalists as they travelled around the globe searching for exotic specimens to take home. After many years travelling abroad, both biologists came to the revolutionary conclusion that species are not static, perfect beings; they evolve over time and adapt to their environment. They realized that nature is a constant competition for space …show more content…
All life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor, thus creating diversity through morphological differences and unity through shared molecular and genetic makeups. Big Idea 2 says biological systems utilize energy and molecular building blocks to grow, reproduce, and maintain homeostasis; all organisms on Earth use DNA or RNA to store genetic information and pass it on to their offspring, and due to this scientists are able to examine differences in DNA base sequences between species and draw conclusions on the data. In Big Idea 3, it states that living systems store, transmit, and respond to information vital to life processes. The act of Batesian mimicry exemplifies this Big Idea; the predated animal mimics an unsavoury species in order to avoid predation, and the predator avoids the mimic animal because they believe consuming the animal would be harmful, or at least unpalatable to them (Sherratt, 2008). The last Big Idea says that biological systems interact with those interactions having complex properties. The previous example can apply to this Idea as well; the phenotypic makeup of a species can differ depending on what traits are selected, and whether or not the trait is selected depends on if organisms with that trait can survive predation from other species and produce fertile

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