Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.[1][2] Evolutionary processes give rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.[3]

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal common ancestor (LUCA),[4][5][6] which lived approximately 3.5–3.8 billion years ago,[7] although a study in 2015 found “remains of biotic life” from 4.1 billion years ago in ancient rocks in Western Australia.[8][9] In July 2016, scientists reported identifying a set of 355 genes from the LUCA of all organisms living on Earth.[10]

Repeated formation of new species (speciation), change within species (anagenesis), and loss of species (extinction) throughout the evolutionary history of life on Earth are demonstrated by shared sets of morphological and biochemical traits, including shared DNA sequences.[11] These shared traits are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct a biological “tree of life” based on evolutionary relationships (phylogenetics), using both existing species and fossils. The fossil record includes a progression from early biogenic graphite,[12] to microbial mat fossils,[13][14][15] to fossilized multicellular organisms. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction.[16] More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.[17][18] Estimates of Earth’s current species range from 10 to 14 million,[19][20] of which about 1.9 million are estimated to have been named[21] and 1.6 million documented in a central database to date.[22] More recently, in May 2016, scientists reported that 1 trillion species are estimated to be on Earth currently with only one-thousandth of one percent described.[23]

In the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin formulated the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection, published in his book On the Origin of Species (1859). Evolution by natural selection is a process demonstrated by the observation that more offspring are produced than can possibly survive, along with three facts about populations: 1) traits vary among individuals with respect to morphology, physiology, and behaviour (phenotypic variation), 2) different traits confer different rates of survival and reproduction (differential fitness), and 3) traits can be passed from generation to generation (heritability of fitness).[24] Thus, in successive generations members of a population are replaced by progeny of parents better adapted to survive and reproduce in the biophysical environment in which natural selection takes place. This teleonomy is the quality whereby the process of natural selection creates and preserves traits that are seemingly fitted for the functional roles they perform.[25] The processes by which the changes occur, from one generation to another, are called evolutionary processes or mechanisms.[26] The four most widely recognized evolutionary processes are natural selection (including sexual selection), genetic drift, mutation and gene migration.[26] Natural selection and genetic drift sort variation; mutation and gene migration create variation.[26]

Consequences of selection can include meiotic drive[27] (unequal transmission of certain alleles), nonrandom mating[28] and genetic hitchhiking. In the early 20th century the modern evolutionary synthesis integrated classical genetics with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection through the discipline of population genetics. The importance of natural selection as a cause of evolution was accepted into other branches of biology.