Final answer:
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory supports the concept that species change over time through the inheritance of acquired characteristics, suggesting that traits developed by organisms for adaptation can be passed to offspring.
Step-by-step explanation:
Lamarck's Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics
The question relates to what would be supported by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's theory. Lamarck, a French naturalist, was an early proponent of the idea that species evolve over time. However, his conception of evolution was different from that of Darwinian natural selection. Lamarck posited that traits acquired by an organism during its lifetime could be passed down to its offspring. This concept is known as the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Therefore, the correct answer to which of the following would be supported by Lamarck's theory is:
Species change over time through the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
This proposition is clearly articulated in Lamarck's ideas, which suggest that if an organism changes during its life in order to adapt to its environment, these changes can be inherited by its descendants, thereby contributing to evolutionary change in the population. In contrast to random genetic mutations and natural selection — mechanisms supported by modern evolutionary theory — Lamarck's ideas focused on the adaptability and changes within the lifetime of individual organisms.