1. I believe that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had the biggest influence on Darwin's national selection theory because he was one of the first to attempt to explain the process of evolution. Lamarck was also one of the first to connect the relationship between species and their environments. He had the fundamentals of natural selection however he didn't have it completely correct, Darwin and Wallace refined his theory.
2. Lamarck was one of the first to look into natural selection, he noticed the importance of the relationship between the environment and the organisms in and around that environment. His theory was that if there was a change in the external environment, an organism would need to evolve in order to accommodate the new surroundings and changes. However, Lamarck's theory had a serious flaw because according to his theory if an animal acquired a new trait it would be able to pass the trait down to its offspring. Darwin discovered that natural selection occurs over generations and not to specific individuals in one lifetime however Lamarck did lay down the fundamentals prior to Darwin's studies.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_09
3. Lamarck directly affected the point "if the environment changes, the traits that are helpful or adaptive to that environment will be
different" because he forged the path for natural selection by emphasizing the relationship between organisms and their environment and how they must adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. Although his initial theory was incorrect, it allowed Darwin to build upon it.
4. I believe that eventually Darwin would have revealed the theory of natural selection even without Lamarck's groundwork but only because someone else probably would have been on the forefront before Darwin. Had no one been the first to discover this, whether it be Lamarck or someone else I think it would have seriously impaired Darwin's studies. Lamarck was a huge stepping stone in evolution and natural selection so I think that the conclusion would have been a little bit different if it weren't for Lamarck. Darwin studied Lamarck when he went to Edinburgh, so if Lamarck hadn't made the initial observation and no one else had either then I definitely think that Darwin's studies would have been some what paralyzed.
5. The Catholic church opposed evolution because they thought it contradicted their beliefs that God created all beings. During Darwin's time, the theory of evolution was looked down upon because it clashed with the church. Darwin held off on publishing his first work because he wanted to obtain more data and he did not want to upset his strictly religious wife and cousin, he also knew it would be very controversial to many others. He finally published it because Wallace had a theory dangerously close to natural selection so Darwin wanted to publish his thoughts before someone else stole the opportunity. Evolution was viewed as a threat during this time so Darwin was not very eager to publish any papers quite yet.
