Which term best describes the scientific synthesis that later integrated Darwin's theory with genetics?

• A. Biochemistry
• B. The Modern Synthesis
• C. Paleontology
• D. Ecology

Answer: (B)

Integrating Darwin's idea of natural selection with the genetic mechanisms that produce variation is the core idea here. Darwin described how advantageous traits become more common, but the genetic basis for those traits wasn't understood until the rise of modern genetics. The Modern Synthesis is the historical label for bringing Darwinian selection together with Mendelian inheritance and population genetics. It shows how small genetic changes, arising through mutation and shuffled by recombination, spread through populations under selection, while processes like genetic drift and gene flow shape allele frequencies over time. This framework accounts for both small-scale changes within populations and larger-scale changes over species, and it ties together evidence from genetics, fossils, and ecology into a single explanation of evolutionary change. Other fields—biochemistry, paleontology, ecology—are important in their own right, but they do not name the unified theory that merges Darwin’s ideas with genetics.