 Charles Darwin's fascination with beetles is shared by modern-day
biologists, who are beginning to learn how their incredible diversity
of forms evolved.
An evolutionary biologist at Washington State University says he
often encounters people who are surprised to learn what he does.
They have the impression there’s only a handful of scientists in
the country who manage to scrape together a few bits of information
in support of Darwin’s theory.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Scientific journals
publish reams of new data every year about how evolution works. The
Palouse alone is home to 80 to 100 biologists exploring the
patterns of evolution and the processes that drive it.
And that number is deceptively low. In a way, every biologist is
an evolutionary biologist. Carol Anelli, an entomologist who also
studies the history of evolutionary thought, says few people
realize the importance of evolution in their everyday lives, that
the theory of evolution underlies all of modern biology and
medicine.
“In drug design, or in taking natural products from animals,
there’s an underlying recognition by the scientist that the way
that’s operating [in those animals] is the way probably it’s going
to work on humans,” says Anelli. And that similarity is due to
shared genetic history.
“There are many areas of science where breakthroughs are made
using so-called ‘lower organisms’ such as bacteria, roundworms, and
fruit flies,” she says—and if we and the model animals were not
linked through evolution, “why would we be doing these studies? We
wouldn’t. The federal government would not be giving millions of
dollars to work on roundworms and fruit flies.”
In our look at evolutionary biology at WSU, we have space for
only a few research stories. There’s a lot more where they come
from, spanning the range from what’s sexy to salamanders, to how
the evolution of a virus can result in an epidemic that kills
millions of people. All of the stories are linked by the theme of
species adapting and changing to launch their offspring
successfully into the world. That’s what evolution boils down to:
producing offspring that will be able, in their turn, to thrive in
their habitat and have offspring of their own.
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