The foundations of evolutionary genetics

Abstract

The fields of evolutionary biology and genetics were founded as separate disciplines in the mid-1800s, largely due to the works of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel respectively. It would, however, take decades before biologists finally understood the deep connection between the principles of heredity and the processes of evolution and that neither could be fully understood without the other. This chapter takes a brief look at the history of these disciplines, including how the key concepts, ideas, and technologies, fundamental to all of biology, were discovered and how these have affected our ways of thinking. Many important concepts are foreshadowed here that will be handled at greater depth in later chapters. The chapter ends with a brief review of important methods in contemporary evolutionary genetics and a hint towards future developments in the field.