Imagine a photograph of your great-grandparents, grandparents and parents side by side. You’d see a resemblance, but each generation would look distinct from its predecessors. This is the process of evolution in its simplest form: descent with modification.
Over many generations, a staggering amount of modification is possible. This is how the diversity of life on earth came to be.
This idea, though, has long been misunderstood as a path that leads in one direction, toward higher or better organisms.
Extending this perspective beyond humans, early paleontological theories about ancient life supported the idea of orthogenesis, or progressive evolution, in which each generation of a lineage advanced toward more sophisticated or optimized forms.
Assistant Professor of Plant Evolutionary Biology Jacob Suissa researched whether a one-way model of reproductive evolution always holds true in plants. Read about his findings at The Conversation.
UT is a member of The Conversation, an independent source for news articles and informed analysis written by the academic community and edited by journalists for the general public. Through this partnership, we seek to provide a better understanding of the important work of our researchers. Read more of our articles published by The Conversation on the UT news site.
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Cindi King (865-974-0937, cking126@utk.edu)