Evolutionary biology

The newer field of evolutionary developmental biology ("evo-devo") investigates how embryogenesis is controlled, thus yielding a wider synthesis that integrates developmental biology with the fields of study covered by the earlier evolutionary synthesis.

Another way is by perceived taxonomic group, with fields such as zoology, botany, and microbiology, reflecting what was once seen as the major divisions of life.

[5] In evolutionary developmental biology, scientists look at how the different processes in development play a role in how a specific organism reaches its current body plan.

[6][7] The idea of evolution by natural selection was proposed by Charles Darwin in 1859, but evolutionary biology, as an academic discipline in its own right, emerged during the period of the modern synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s.

The quick generation time of bacteria and viruses such as bacteriophages makes it possible to explore evolutionary questions.

Ernst Mayr in systematics, George Gaylord Simpson in paleontology and G. Ledyard Stebbins in botany helped to form the modern synthesis.

James Crow,[9] Richard Lewontin,[10] Dan Hartl,[11] Marcus Feldman,[12][13] and Brian Charlesworth[14] trained a generation of evolutionary biologists.

[23] The modern evolutionary synthesis involved agreement about which forces contribute to evolution, but not about their relative importance.