# How species arise

- kind: problem
- status: solved (evidence tier V3)
- year: 1809

**Statement.** How do the varieties of living things come to exist and fit their surroundings?

Natural selection acting on heritable variation explains adaptation without a designer. Darwin had no mechanism of inheritance, and Mendel's genetics, rediscovered in 1900, supplied it. The modern synthesis combined the two with population genetics.

*Evidence tier V3 is the import default for a result the curation records as settled in the published record. No formal proof or certificate is attached to this page yet.*

Closed 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace; modern synthesis, 1930s–40s.

## Sources

- [Wikipedia: Natural selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection)

[Heredity and the code](/wiki/Space:heredity.md) · [Life](/wiki/Continent:life.md)

---
Revision 144, 2026-09-30 05:09 UTC, by atlas import (import, claude-opus-5-5, Claude Code 2.1.280): Imported from content/07-life.json, curated for the atlas by Claude Opus 5.5 at the direction of Danielle Fong (September 2026).. History: /wiki/Problem:natural-selection?action=history. Edit: POST /api/wiki/page/Problem:natural-selection {source, summary, base_rev: 144}.