Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology.
The investigational range of current research widened to encompass the genetic architecture of adaptation, molecular evolution, and the different forces that contribute to evolution, such as sexual selection, genetic drift, and biogeography. Moreover, the newer field of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") investigates how embryogenesis, the development of the embryo, is controlled, thus yielding a wider synthesis that integrates developmental biology with the fields of study covered by the earlier evolutionary synthesis.
Subfields
Evolution is the central unifying concept in biology. Biology can be divided in various ways. One way is by the level of biological organization, from molecular to cell, organism to population. An earlier way is by perceived taxonomic group, with fields such as zoology, botany, and microbiology, reflecting what were once seen as the major divisions of life. A third way is by approach, such as field biology, theoretical biology, experimental evolution, and paleontology. These alternative ways of dividing up the subject can be combined with evolutionary biology to create subfields like evolutionary ecology and evolutionary developmental biology.
More recently, the merge between the biological science and applied sciences gave birth to new fields that are extensions of evolutionary biology, including evolutionary robotics, engineering, algorithms, economics, and architecture. The basic mechanisms of evolution are applied directly or indirectly to come up with novel designs or solve problems that are difficult to solve otherwise. The research generated in these applied fields in turn, contribute to progress, especially thanks to work on evolution in computer science and engineering fields such as mechanical engineering.
Evolutionary developmental biology
In evolutionary developmental biology the different processes of development can play a role in how a specific organism reaches its current body plan. The genetic regulation of ontogeny and phylogenetic process is what allows for this kind of understanding of biology to be possible. Looking at different processes during development, and going through the evolutionary tree, one can determine at which point a specific structure came about. For example, the three germ layers can be observed to not be present in cnidarians and ctenophores, which instead present in worms, being more or less developed depending on the kind of worm itself. Other structures like the development of Hox genes and sensory organs such as eyes can also be traced with this practice.
History
The idea of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, but evolutionary biology, as an academic discipline in its own right, emerged during the period of the modern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s. It was not until the 1980s that many universities had departments of evolutionary biology. In the United States, many universities have created departments of molecular and cell biology or ecology and evolutionary biology, in place of the older departments of botany and zoology. Palaeontology is often grouped with earth science.
Microbiology too is becoming an evolutionary discipline, now that microbial physiology and genomics are better understood. The quick generation time of bacteria and viruses such as bacteriophages makes it possible to explore evolutionary questions.
Many biologists have contributed to shaping the modern discipline of evolutionary biology. Theodosius Dobzhansky and E. B. Ford established an empirical research programme. Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright and J. S. Haldane created a sound theoretical framework. Ernst Mayr in systematics, George Gaylord Simpson in paleontology and G. Ledyard Stebbins in botany helped to form the modern synthesis. James Crow, Richard Lewontin, Dan Hartl, Marcus Feldman, and Brian Charlesworth trained a generation of evolutionary biologists.
Current research topics
Current research in evolutionary biology covers diverse topics and incorporates ideas from diverse areas, such as molecular genetics and computer science.
First, some fields of evolutionary research try to explain phenomena that were poorly accounted for in the modern evolutionary synthesis. These include speciation, the evolution of sexual reproduction, the evolution of cooperation, the evolution of ageing, and evolvability.
Second, biologists ask the most straightforward evolutionary question: "what happened and when?". This includes fields such as paleobiology, as well as systematics and phylogenetics.
Third, the modern evolutionary synthesis was devised at a time when nobody understood the molecular basis of genes. Today, evolutionary biologists try to determine the genetic architecture of interesting evolutionary phenomena such as adaptation and speciation. They seek answers to questions such as how many genes are involved, how large are the effects of each gene, how interdependent are the effects of different genes, what do the genes do, and what changes happen to them (e.g., point mutations vs. gene duplication or even genome duplication). They try to reconcile the high heritability seen in twin studies with the difficulty in finding which genes are responsible for this heritability using genome-wide association studies.
One challenge in studying genetic architecture is that the classical population genetics that catalysed the modern evolutionary synthesis must be updated to take into account modern molecular knowledge. This requires a great deal of mathematical development to relate DNA sequence data to evolutionary theory as part of a theory of molecular evolution. For example, biologists try to infer which genes have been under strong selection by detecting selective sweeps.
Fourth, the modern evolutionary synthesis involved agreement about which forces contribute to evolution, but not about their relative importance. Current research seeks to determine this. Evolutionary forces include natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, genetic draft, developmental constraints, mutation bias and biogeography.
An evolutionary approach is key to much current research in organismal biology and ecology, such as in life history theory. Annotation of genes and their function relies heavily on comparative approaches. The field of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") investigates how developmental processes work, and compares them in different organisms to determine how they evolved.
Many physicians do not have enough background in evolutionary biology, making it difficult to use it in modern medicine.
Drug resistance today
Evolution plays a role in resistance of drugs. For example, how HIV becomes resistant to medications and the body's immune system. The mutation of resistance of HIV is due to the natural selection of the survivors and their offspring. The one HIV that survived the immune system reproduced and had offspring that were also resistant to the immune system. Drug resistance also causes many problems for patients such as a worsening sickness or the sickness can mutate into something that can no longer be cured with medication. Without the proper medicine a sickness can be the death of a patient. If their body has resistance to a certain number of drugs, then the right medicine will be harder and harder to find. Not finishing an antibiotic is also an example of resistance that will cause the bacteria or virus to evolve and continue to spread in the body. When the full dosage of the medication does not enter the body and perform its proper job, the virus and bacteria that survive the initial dosage will continue to reproduce. This makes for another sickness later on that will be even harder to cure because this disease will be resistant to the first medication used. Finishing medicine that is prescribed is a vital step in avoiding antibiotic resistance. Also, those with chronic illnesses, illnesses that last throughout the lifetime, are at a greater risk to antibiotic resistance than others. This is because overuse of a drug or too high of a dosage can cause a patient's immune system to weaken and the illness will evolve and grow stronger. For example, cancer patients will need a stronger and stronger dosage of medication because of their low functioning immune system.
Journals
Some scientific journals specialise exclusively in evolutionary biology as a whole, including the journals Evolution, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, and BMC Evolutionary Biology. Some journals cover sub-specialties within evolutionary biology, such as the journals Systematic Biology, Molecular Biology and Evolution and its sister journal Genome Biology and Evolution, and Cladistics.
Other journals combine aspects of evolutionary biology with other related fields. For example, Molecular Ecology, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B, The American Naturalist and Theoretical Population Biology have overlap with ecology and other aspects of organismal biology. Overlap with ecology is also prominent in the review journals Trends in Ecology and Evolution and Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics. The journals Genetics and PLoS Genetics overlap with molecular genetics questions that are not obviously evolutionary in nature.
