Charles Darwin

Summary

'Charles Robert Darwin' (ˈdɑrwɪn ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. His studies at the University

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin

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Influence of Wastewater Composition on Microbial Communities of Aerobic Granules and their Nutrient Removal Performances

Aline Sondra Adler, Christof Holliger, Eva Reynaert

ABSTRACT Basic understanding of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) processes has mainly been obtained in laboratory-scale studies with simple synthetic wastewaters. Two approaches were applied here to make a step toward the comprehension of AGS systems treating real municipal wastewater. One approach consisted in increasing the complexity of the influent composition of an AGS sequencing batch reactor (SBR) fed with volatile fatty acids, the other in starting up four AGS SBRs with four different wastewaters. Nutrient removal could be maintained in the first approach and indications for a change in the population responsible for biological phosphorous removal were obtained (P-removal). The four reactors started up with different wastewaters showed different granulation behaviour and P-removal was impaired in the reactors fed with municipal wastewater. More detailed investigations of the microbial communities will allow to elucidate the reasons behind the observations made in this preliminary study.

2017

Characterizing the Influence of Effective Population Size on the Rate of Adaptation: Gillespie's Darwin Domain

Jeffrey David Jensen

Characterizing the role of effective population size in dictating the rate of adaptive evolution remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Depending on the underlying distribution of fitness effects of new mutations, populations of different sizes may differ vastly in their rate of adaptation. Here, we collect polymorphism data at over 100 loci for two closely related Drosophila species with different current effective population sizes (N-e), Drosophila miranda and D. pseudoobscura, to evaluate the prevalence of adaptive evolution versus genetic drift in molecular evolution. Utilizing these large and consistently sampled data sets, we obtain greatly improved estimates of the demographic histories of both species. Specifically, although current N-e differs between these species, their ancestral sizes were much more similar. We find that statistical approaches capturing recent adaptive evolution (using patterns of polymorphisms) detect higher rates of adaptive evolution in the larger D. pseudoobscura population. In contrast, methods aimed at detecting selection over longer time periods (i.e., those relying on divergence data) estimate more similar rates of adaptation between the two species. Thus, our results suggest an important role of effective population size in dictating rates of adaptation and highlight how complicated population histories-as is probably the case for most species-can effect rates of adaptation. Additionally, we also show how different methodologies to detect positive selection can reveal information about different timescales of adaptive evolution.

2011