Explain why successive generations of this organism have remained unchanged in appearance for many thousands of years.
Answers
The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1964) famously wrote "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," and the field of ecology is no exception to this broadly-embraced principle. To study ecology without an understanding of evolutionary theory is to watch a sporting event without first learning the rules — players run, points are scored, whistles shrill, but the guiding principles underlying these events remain a mystery. With an understanding of the rules, however, even the smallest intricacies of the game can be appreciated, even loved. So it is with ecology: Evolution provides a canon by which we may better understand the interactions of organisms with their environments. In this section, we define evolution as it is understood to modern biology and as it applies to ecology.
Evolution is defined as the change in the inherited.