Why is evolution important in explaining the diversity of life?

Answer 1

Try this one ... only a sadist would have designed mosquitoes and lice.

With evolution you don't get to assume that humans are special ... it's all just a big something : experiment, accident, game?

Answer 2

Throughout this essay, we discuss misconceptions relating to evolution. Such misconceptions have had such a strong impact on modern civilization that it is important to begin by setting aside a few misguided ideas that strike at the very heart of the evolutionary process. Many of these misconceptions are embodied in a popular "argument" against evolution that goes something like this: Suppose you took a watch apart and laid the pieces on the ground. If you came back in a billion years, would you really expect the watch to have assembled itself? This argument is a virtual museum of all the fallacies associated with evolution. First of all, a watch (or any of the other variations used in similar arguments) is mechanical, not organic or biological, which is the class of objects under discussion within the framework of evolution. In that sense, the answer to this question is easy enough: No, a watch probably never would assemble itself, because it is not made of living material and it has no need for survival. Another problem with the watch argument is that it starts with impossibly large pieces. Let us assume that the watch is a living being; even so, one would not expect its dials and gears to assemble themselves. But evolution does not make such claims: there is nothing in the theory of evolution to lead one to believe that a collection of organs lying around on a beach eventually would piece themselves together to make a whale. According to what paleontologists (see Paleontology) and other scientists can deduce, over the course of three billion years life-forms evolved from extremely simple self-replicating carbon-based molecules to single-cell organisms. This is hardly what one would call breakneck speed. The more visible or "exciting" part of evolution, with the proliferation of species that produced the dinosaurs and (much later) humans, took place in the past billion years. In fact, the pace of change was still very, very slow until about half a billion years ago, and it has been accelerating ever since. For the vast majority of evolutionary history, however, change has been so slow that, by contrast, watching paint dry would be like playing a high-speed video game. Ironically, for the watch scenario to be truly analogous to anything in evolution, one would have to start with atoms and molecules not whole gears and dials. Opponents of evolutionary theory might take this fact as being favorable to their cause, but if the watch were made of living, organic material rather than metal, it is possible that the molecules would have some reason to join in the formation of organelles and, later, cells. Or perhaps they would not. Therein lies another problem with the watch analogy and, indeed, with many of the attempts to argue against evolution on a religious basis. This might be called the "fallacy of intention," or the idea that evolution is driven by some overall purpose.

Answer 3

Evolution explains the diversity of life as a result of genetic divergence of subpopulations.

It can be considered a Law of evolution that reproductively isolated populations diverge genetically. Changes in each branch of the ancestral stock accumulate in the isolated population, and because of reproductive isolation, are not free to propagate throughout the entire species. Since these changes are essentially random - although mediated by the non-random process of natural selection - the separate populations will acquire *different* changes, and grow apart at the genetic level, resulting in different morphologies and behaviours. This process is called speciation (see links below).

Reproductive isolation can come about in many ways. One of the most obvious ways is geographical isolation: a population becomes separated from the rest of its species by a geographical boundary. This can be caused by flooding, volcanic eruptions, or simply migration of a subpopulation beyond the range of the ancestral population. An example of this is Herrel et al 2008 (see link below). But divergence can also occur in sympatry. An example of this is Rolshauser et al 2009 (see link below)

Answer 4

Evolution helps people understand why life has become so diverse. It explains how certain traits become characteristic of animal and plant life through adaptations.

Answer 5

they both show the cycle of life from start to finsh start being born and finish being death.

Answer 6

Because of how many species developed from evolution to form many diverse animals.

Answer 7

Evolution is the mechanism that causes diversity.