Online Brochure Questions Answered A printable copy of this document is also available. His famous book The Origin of Species was published in 1859. In general, evolution is a process of change over time. In biological evolution, the process of change occurs as modifications in successive generations. The benefits of these modifications are determined by natural selection, the process by which beneficial changes allow a relative increase in the number of surviving offspring of individuals with those modifications.
Evolution is the natural governing principle of the biological sciences.
It provides a relevant context for an otherwise unorganized set of facts. Insights gained from evolutionary biology have produced major advances in the medical and agricultural sciences and affect important topics in our lives, such as health and treatment of disease, improvement of food crops, and conservation. We see excellent examples of recent evolution in the appearance of agricultural pests resistant to pesticides and disease-causing bacteria resistant to antibiotics. Some of the most difficult to treat bacterial infections are contracted while the patient is in the hospital, where the constant use of disinfectants and antibiotics provides strong environmental selection in favor of resistance to these chemicals. It depends on the length of a generation in a given species.