Darwin in the City: How Civilization Drives Evolution
1. Darwin in the City:
How Civilization Drives Evolution
Carl Zimmer
Director’s Lecture Series
The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University
March 24, 2014
7. “…Most creationists and most evolutionists are well
aware by now of the fall of the evolutionist’s icon, the
peppered moth, which for many years had adorned the
pages of introductory biology textbooks as the prime
example of ‘evolution in action.’ Its removal has also
been accompanied by a sad exposure of the world of
scientific academia as often a world of pettiness,
inordinate rivalry, and tender egos, sometimes tempting
to near-fraud in the ‘tweaking’ of reported results.”
64. Ordovician 443 million years ago 86% of all species extinct
Devonian 359 million years ago 75%
Permian 251 million years ago 96%
Triassic 200 million years ago 80%
Cretaceous 65 million years ago 76%
Anthropocene? Now? ???
Barnosky et al, Nature 2011
The Sixth Mass Extinction?
71. FIGURE 6.24 Humans domesticated cattle in both East Africa (left) and
Northern Europe (right) several thousand years ago
• In both places, mutations arose that
enabled humans to digest milk as adults
• These mutations spread rapidly because
they raised fitness