Neo-Darwinism is the interpretation of Darwinian evolution through natural selection as it has variously been modified since it was first proposed. Neo-Darwinism is an attempt to reconcile Mendelian genetics, which says that organisms do not change with time, with Darwinism, which claims they do change. The conceptual framework of evolutionary biology emerged with the Modern Synthesis in the early twentieth century and expanded into a highly successful research program to explore the processes of diversification and adaptation.

           Neo-Darwinism modifies Darwinism with the addition of Mendelian genetics, molecular biology, population genetics and biological species concept. It considers only heritable genetic variation for evolution and explains the reasons for variation, factors for organic evolution, such as variations, mutations, natural selection, genetic drift and isolation of species.

            Hoelzel et al., 2002, study on impact of bottleneck on genetic diversity of northern elephant seals. The results show that the bottleneck had a quantifiable effect on genetic diversity by reduction in the variation.

            Natural selection favored the replacement of industrial melanic moth Biston betularia f. typica with the Biston betularia  f. carbonaria due to industrialization in England. Industrial melanism in the peppered moth is one of the best example of Darwinian evolution (Michael et al., 2009).

             Singh et al., 2015, study the effect of parasite infection on recombinant fraction in Drosophila melanogaster. The result revealed that increase in recombination fraction was noticed upon infection with parasite than compared to control.

            With the advances in the field of evolutionary biology in the present era gives insight knowledge in understanding the evolution. In evolutionary biology we study few additional factors apart from earlier one, such as evolutionary developmental biology, developmental plasticity and niche construction. In the view of evolutionary developmental biology, no gene in our body assigned first in its function, one does anything until its told to do and what activates the first regulatory gene is still a question. Developmental plasticity explains capacity of an organism to change its phenotype in response the environment. Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other's niches (Kevin et al., 2015).

             Studies on Neo-Darwinism revealed incredibly important in understanding the evolution of ribosomes at atomic resolution. On comparing with the prokaryotic and eukaryotic ribosome it had revealed that primary core structure remains same in all organisms with addition of primary and secondary structure (Petrov et al., 2014).

           Darwin’s theory of natural selection was accepted. But his theory lacked an inputs of modern concepts of genetics and the mechanisms how characters appear and persist in a population. Later Neo-Darwinism emerged by the synthesis of original idea given by Darwin and addition of new knowledge of genetics, population dynamics and hereditary to the theory. Advances in the field of evolutionary biology broadens the doors for researchers to study and compare the evolution process from prokaryotes till the present day eukaryotes.

 

References:

1.     Hoelzel, A. R., Fleischer, C. R., Campagna, C., Boeuf, B. J. L. and Alvord, G., 2002, Impact of a population bottle neck on symmetry and genetic diversity in the northern elephant seals. J. Evol. Biol., 15: 567-575.

 

2. Kevin, N. L., Tobias, U., Marcus, W. F., Sterelny, K., Gerd, B. M., Jablonka, E. and Smee, J. O., 2015, The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions. Pro. R. Soc. B.,282: 1-14.

3. Michael, E. N. M., 2009, Industrial melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia:  An excellent teaching example of Darwinian evolution in action. Springer, 2: 63–74.

4. Petrova, A. S., Berniera, C. R., Hsiaoa, C., Norrisa, A. M., Kovacsa, N. A., Waterburya, C.C., Stepanova, V. G., Harveya, S. C., Fox, G. E., Wartell, R. M., Hud, N. V. and Williams, L. D., 2014, Evolution of the ribosomes at atomic resolution. Proc. Natl. Acad., 10:1073.

 

5. Singh, N. D., Criscoe, D. R., Shelly Skolfield., Kohl, K. P., Keebaugh, E. S. and Schlenke T. A., 2015, Fruit flies diversify their offspring in response to parasite infection. Science, 349: 747-750.