OEB 53 Lecture Notes - Special Creation, Allopatric Speciation

• School: Harvard University
• Department: Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
• Course: OEB 53
• Professor: Andrew Berry

Document Summary

Similar climates in different parts of the world have vastly different speciesdarwin tries to promote the role of geography over the role of climate. Argument against special creation: why create so many distinct/unrelated species to occupy similar habitats: barriers are important. Darwin notices early on that isolation is important in speciation: organisms have to be isolated so that they don"t mix with other organisms (equivalent to today"s ideas about allopatry) Examples of land barriers and oceanic barriers: groups of related organisms confined to a specific region. Evidence against special creation: it would be redundant to populate similar niches around the world with different organisms. Darwin agrees with land bridges over shallow bodies of water, but does not agree that the continents had not been where they were in modern times. Scattered seeds on the water: how many sunk and how many floated, calculated currents, distance. Took mud from a pond, how much would germinate from it.