Ch. 10 Flashcards
a group of organisms so similar to one another that they can reproduce and have fertile offspring.
Species
Change in a species over time.
Evolution
traces of organisms that existed in the past.
Fossils
states that natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions have happened often during Earth’s long history.
Catastrophism
landforms resulted from slow changes over a long period of time
Gradualism
This theory states that the geologic processes that shape Earth are uniform through time.
Uniformitarianism
the difference in the physical traits of an individual from those of other individuals in the group to which it belongs.
Variation
a feature that allows an organism to better survive in its environment.
Adaptation
The process by which humans change a species by breeding it for certain traits
Artificial Selection
the ability of a trait to be passed down from one generation to the next.
Heritability
a mechanism by which individuals that have inherited beneficial adaptations produce more offspring on average than do other individuals.
Natural Selection
all the individuals of a species that live in an area.
Population
a measure of the ability to survive and produce more offspring relative to other members of the population in a given environment.
Fitness
the study of the distribution of organisms around the world.
Biogeography
features that are similar in structure but appear in different organisms and have different functions.
Homologous Structures
structures that perform a similar function, but are not similar in origin.
Analogous Structures
remnants of organs or structures that had a function in an early ancestor.
Vestigial Structures
the study of fossils or extinct organisms, continues to provide new information and support current hypotheses about how evolution occurs.
Paleontology
