What was Charles Darwin's impact on classification?

Answer 1

Charles Darwin was the first to amass any evidence of the development/'descent with modification' of life. His and Alfred Russell Wallace's ideas were that life changed by Natural Selection.

Today, Darwin's idea is called the Theory of Evolution and is the base of all today's Biology. Theodosius Dobzhansky's remark of 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution' celebrates the success of Darwin's theory.

Darwin's ideas were not always welcomed, and still are not by those satisfied with creationistic views. However, evolution (as Darwin probably firmly knew) was a science and thus one's conclusions must be determined by evidence. Today, Evolution explains comparative anatomy, the sequence of fossils through geological time, the existence of transitional species (both fossil and extant), the similarities in the genetic code and DNA across all life, behaviour, psychology, biochemistry, ecology and everything else in the biotic world.

Answer 2

Charles Darwin changed Linnaeus's idea of classifying species according to their similarities and differences. Darwin's ideas made biologists begin to see classification as a way of describing evolutionary relationships.

Answer 3

Darwin's theory of Natural Selection made it possible to identify which species are related to which. For example, different bills/beaks of birds could be related but because of mutation and survival of the fittest, there are bound to be new types of beaks. So it is possible to classify which species came first and make some sort of "family tree" to see how far they've come since the first bird species.

Answer 4

He figured that finches were animals.

Answer 5

YES