Given that the con­cepts and real­i­ties of Dar­win­ian evo­lu­tion are still chal­lenged, albeit rarely by biol­o­gists, a suc­cinct brief­ing on why evo­lu­tion by nat­ural selec­tion is an empir­i­cally val­i­dated prin­ci­ple is use­ful for peo­ple to have to hand.

That’s from the intro­duc­tion to 15 Evo­lu­tion­ary Gems (pdf): a doc­u­ment pro­duced by the sci­en­tific jour­nal Nature to “illus­trate the breadth, depth and power of evo­lu­tion­ary thinking”. The ‘evo­lu­tion­ary gems’ are in three categories:

  • Gems From the Fos­sil Record
    • Land-living ances­tors of whales
    • From water to land
    • The ori­gin of feathers
    • The evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory of teeth
    • The ori­gin of the ver­te­brate skeleton
  • Gems From Habi­tats
    • Nat­ural selec­tion in speciation
    • Nat­ural selec­tion in lizards
    • A case of co-evolution
    • Dif­fer­en­tial dis­per­sal in wild birds
    • Selec­tive sur­vival in wild guppies
    • Evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory matters
  • Gems From Mol­e­c­u­lar Processes
    • Darwin’s Gala­pa­gos finches
    • Microevo­lu­tion meets macroevolution
    • Toxin resis­tance in snakes and clams
    • Vari­a­tion ver­sus stability