Talk:Biology

From EvoWiki

Paragraph rewrite

I rewrote part of the paragraph about evolution's explanation feats. But here's a snag:

"Evolution also unites biogeography with all other modern biology: all organisms are adapted to their environment to a greater or lesser extent in the way that all organisms show traits that are adapted to the environment they live in such as darwin's finches on the Galapagos islands who have beaks specialized to each type of food they eat such as finches who normally eat nuts generally have larger beaks for crushing nuts and the finches that eat insects often have more narrow beaks specialized for eating insects."

Isn't biogeography something else entirely? Australia only having marsupial mammals and so on?

Here is the rest of the paragraph, which still needs rewriting:

"Evolution also unites paleobiology and paleontology with the rest of modern biology: change in the fossil record can be explained by evolution such as the evolution of the horse Due to an almost-complete fossil record of ancient horses found in North American sedimentary deposits very clearly demonstrates evolution of the horse in the fossil record such as the increase in size from 0.4 m to 1.5 m which shows transition from the tropical rainforest environment of the Eocene Epoch to the Plains of the Pleistocene and Holocene and the Lengthening of limbs and feet which also shows adaptation to the transition from the tropical rainforest environment of the Eocene Epoch to the Plains of the Pleistocene and Holocene. Biological Evolution is also important to Microbiology because microorganisms much like larger organisms also evolve to their environment for example bacteria after being exposed to certain types of medication (such as penicillin) begin to develop resistance to it which clearly is an example of evolution which demonstrates that Microbiology also is united to the rest of modern biology through biological evolution. Darwinian evolution as already shown in this article is very important to understanding modern biology and is the unifying theory because without evolution most of modern biology such as Homology,microbiology,paleobiology,paleontology,Biogeography and many other branches of modern biology would be very difficult to understand as nothing in biology makes sence except in the light of evolution."

--tk 13:27, 2 May 2007 (BST)

Ok, biogeography is the science of the distribution of organisms. It can take adaptation and environment into account when dealing with distributions, but you are right that this paragraph doesn't explain it properly. I don't know enough about the topic to elaborate.

As for the other paragraph, I'd split it:

"Evolution also unites paleobiology and paleontology with the rest of modern biology: change in the shape and form of organisms as shown in the fossil record can only be explained by evolution. For example, an almost-complete fossil record of ancient horses found in North American sedimentary deposits very clearly demonstrates the increase in height from 0.4m (Hyracotherium) to 1.5m (Equus). Evolutionary biology can explain this change as adaptation from the tropical rainforest environment of the Eocene Epoch to the Plains of the Pleistocene and Holocene, where longer limbs allowed for more rapid escape from predators, unlike in the rainforest where foliage was too thick for a horse to gallop.

Biological evolution is also important to Microbiology, as it explains phenomena such as rapid development of resistence to antibiotics.

Darwinian evolution as already shown in this article is very important to understanding modern biology and is the unifying theory because without evolution most of modern biology such as homology, microbiology, paleobiology, paleontology, biogeography and many other branches of modern biology would be very difficult to understand. As Theodosius Dobzhansky titled his famous work, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

I think the microbiology part needs a bit more.--Doddy 01:22, 3 May 2007 (BST)