Ch. 19 - Descent With Modification Flashcards
Who started the scala naturae?
Aristotle
Who created the binomial format for naming species
Carolus Linnaesus
What did Cuvier determine?
Fossil records, some species would appear randomly and some species would disappear completely.
Newer strata had more similar life forms than older strata.
What did Hutton determine?
Change happens through a slow and gradual process
What did Lyell determine?
Geological features that’s changed the earth in the past are still happening today.
Which two people strongly influenced Darwin?
Hutton and Lyell.
What was Lamarck’s hypothesis?
Use and disuse and inheritance of acquired characteristics.
What is use and disuse?
Use: giraffes necks became bigger as they stretched to get to leaves.
Disuse: things that are not used deteriorate.
Would an animal in the Andes more closely resemble animals in the Rockies or in the South American jungle?
South American jungle.
How do new species arise?
From gaining adaptions to their new environments.
What is natural selection?
Individuals who have desired characteristics for the environment are more likely to live longer and reproduce.
Why was Darwin successful with his theory?
He had logic and massive amounts of evidence behind him.
What is descent with modification?
All species came from the same organism, they adapted to their environments.
What is artificial selection?
Humans developing domesticated plants and animals by breeding those with desirable traits
What two observations did Darwin make?
Individuals vary in traits
All species can produce more offspring than the environment can support
What two inferences did Darwin make?
Individuals more suited for the environment tend to have more success and more offspring and the unequal ability of individuals to survive leads to favorable traits to accumulate.
What traits are affected by natural selection?
Heritable traits
Natural selection is a process of…
Editing
Natural selection favors…
Individuals with the advantage at that point in time and in that location
What is a homology?
Similarity resulting from common ancestry
What is a vestigial structure?
A feature in a species that is no longer important but still exists
i.e. the human appendix
What are adaptions?
Inherited characteristics of organisms that enhance their survival and reproduction in specific environmenta
Homoplasy is another word for…
Analogy
What is convergent evolution?
The independent evolution if similar features in different lineages
What is an analogous trait?
Similar trait due to convergent evolution, not from a similar ancestor
What is biogeography?
The scientific study of the geographic distributions of species
Darwin originally defined evolution as …
descent with modification
What is the key observation that must be explained in a unifying theory about life?
Many basic characteristics are shared by all living things.
At the time Darwin voyaged on the HMS Beagle, the popularly accepted theory in Western culture that explained the origin of Earth’s plants and animals held that the various species …
had been created by divine intervention a few thousand years before
Carolus Linnaeus is considered to be the founder of .., and he …
the binomial classification system … thought that resemblances among different species reflected the pattern of their creation
Which of the following is a true statement about Charles Darwin?
He proposed natural selection as the mechanism of evolution.
At the time Charles Darwin sailed on the HMS Beagle, …
several biologists had proposed that species might change over time, but none had suggested a convincing mechanism that might cause the change
During his voyage around the world, Darwin was inspired to think about evolution by …
the writings of Lamarck, fossils, the adaptations of organisms such as the Gálapagos finches, and the uniqueness of organisms.
In Darwin’s view of descent with modification …
natural selection can improve the match between an organism and its environment
What insight did Darwin gain from reading Thomas Malthus’s essay on human suffering?
Organisms have the capacity to overreproduce.
During periods of rapid environmental change, what may happen to a species that was well-suited to the former environment?
species will either adapt, possibly giving rise to new species, or go extinct.
The smallest unit that can evolve is a …
population
According to the theory of evolution, anatomical and molecular homologies should…
produce similar patterns of evolutionary relatedness
When they were first sold, aerosol insecticides were highly effective in killing flies and mosquitoes. Now, several decades later, a much smaller proportion of these insects die when sprayed. The reason fewer insects die when they are sprayed is that…
many mosquitoes today are descendants of mosquitoes with insecticide-resistant characteristics
A population of zooplankton is exposed to a small number of predatory fish that feed on the larger-sized (adult) zooplankton. Which of the following predictions would most likely occur based on the principles of natural selection?
Adult zooplankton will start to reach sexual maturity when they are still relatively small.
How did some strains of Staphylococcus aureus become resistant to antibiotic drugs?
Some members of the bacteria population must have had a genetic variation that made them resistant to antibiotics.
An important challenge to traditional (pre-1860) ideas about species was the observation that seemingly dissimilar organisms such as hummingbirds, humans, and whales have similar skeletal structures. This most directly suggested to biologists that…
dissimilar organisms might have evolved from a distant, common ancestor
Animals that possess homologous structures probably…
evolved from the same ancestor
All known organisms transcribe genetic information to protein molecules via the same genetic code. This finding strongly supports the hypothesis that …
all organisms are descended from a single common ancestor
Evidence from molecular biology supports the theory of evolution by demonstrating that …
losely related organisms have more similar DNA and proteins
What did Darwin observe about species on islands?
They are often closely related to species from the nearest mainland or neighboring islands.
To describe evolution as a “scientific theory” means that …
it is a broad model that is supported by many observations and much experimental evidence
