Which of the following statements correctly identifies how the independent work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace contributed to the acceptance of the theory of evolution by natural selection?
Darwin and Wallace co-authored On the Origin of Species in 1859 after undertaking a joint expedition to the Galápagos Islands to study variations in finches.
Wallace discovered the basic laws of genetic inheritance and dominant/recessive alleles, which provided the physical mechanism Darwin needed to explain how traits are passed on.
Wallace’s independent draft of a theory of natural selection, sent to Darwin from the Malay Archipelago, prompted the joint presentation of their papers in 1858, after which Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859.
They used comparative DNA sequencing of island species to demonstrate how natural selection alters gene pools and allele frequencies over time.
38 exam-style questions on OCR GCSE Biology 5.2 Natural selection and evolution, covering 5.2.1 Genetic variation within a population, 5.2.2 Developments in classification systems, 5.2.3 How evolution occurs through natural selection, 5.2.4 Evolution as change over time, 5.2.5 Evidence for evolution, and 5.2.6 Darwin and Wallace. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.