Chapter 1 Exploring Life Flashcards
Charles Darwin’s book On the origin of species by means of natural selection articulates what two main points?
A large amount of evidence supports the idea of evolution, that species today are descendants of ancestral species in what Darwin called “descent with modification”
Natural selection is a mechanism for evolution
The entire portion of Earth inhabited by life; the sum of all the planet’s ecosystem
Biosphere
All the organisms in a given area, along with the nonliving (abiotic) factors with which they interact; a biological community and it’s physical environment
Ecosystem
A group of individuals belonging to one species and living in the geographic area
Population
An individual living thing,such as bacterium, fungus, protist, plant, or animal
Organism
A group of organs that work together in performing viral body functions
Organ system
A specialized structure composed of several different types of tissues that together form specific functions
Organ
Two or more atoms held together by covalent bonds
Molecules
What can a cell do?
Regulate it's internal environment Take in and use energy Respond to its environment Develop and maintain its complex organization Give rise to new cells
An integrated group of cells with a common function, structure or both
Tissues
A basic unit of living matter separated from its environment by a plasma membrane; the fundamental structural unit of life
Cell
A membrane-enclosed structure with a specialized function within a cell
Organelle
A type of cell lacking a membrane-enclosed nucleus and other membrane-enclosed organelles; found only in the domains bacteria and Archaea
Prokaryotic Cells
A type of cell that has a membrane-enclosed nucleus and other membrane-enclosed organelles.
Eukaryotic Cells
Natural selection was inferred by connecting what two observations?
Individuals in a population vary in their traits, many of which are passed on from parents to offspring
A population can produce far more than the environment can support
All organisms except what have eukaryotic cells?
Bacteria, Archaea
New properties that arise in each step upward in the hierarchy of life
Emergent Properties
What is the level at which the properties of life emerge?
Cells
What do all cells have?
Enclosed by a membrane that regulates the passage of materials between the cell and it’s surroundings and use DNA as their genetic information
What acts as recyclers, changing complex matter into simpler mineral nutrients?
Decomposers
What are the two basic types of cells?
Prokaryotic Cells and Eukaryotic Cells
Contain membrane-enclosed organelles, including a nucleus containing DNA and are found in plants, animals, and fungi
Eukaryotic Cells
Systems biology models what?
The complex interactions of biological systems ranging from the function of the biosphere to the complex molecular machinery of a cell
Cells illustrate what other theme in biology
The correlation of structure and function
Were the first to evolve
Are simpler
Are usually smaller than eukaryotic cells
Prokaryotic Cells
Living organisms interact with who and what in their environments
Other organisms and physical factors
The unit of inheritance that transmits information from parents to offspring
Grouped into very long DNA molecules called chromosomes
Control the activities of a cell
Genes
A species’ genes are coded in what?
The sequences of the four building blocks making up DNA’s double helix
What are the producers that provide the food?
Plants
Who eats plants and other animals?
Consumers
The diversity of life can be arranged into what?
Three domains
The dynamics of ecosystems include what two major processes?
- ) The recycling of chemical nutrients from the atmosphere and soil through producers, consumers and decomposes back to the environment
- ) The one-way flow of energy through an ecosystem, entering as sunlight, converted to chemical energy by producers, passed on to consumers, and exiting as heat
Human-caused environmental changes are powerful selective forces that affect the evolution of many species including what?
Antibiotic-resistance bacteria
Pesticide-resistant pests
Endangered species
Increasing rates of extinction
The unity of life is based on what?
DNA and a common genetic code
Scientific research benefits from what?
New technologies
What is the chemical substance of genes?
DNA
The size that stretches from molecules to the biosphere
Vertical dimension
All forms of life essentially use what to do what?
The same code to translate the stored information into proteins
What are the 4 letters that make up the DNA code?
ACTG
We can think of biology’s scope as having what?
Two dimensions
The prokaryotes that often live in Earth’s extreme environments
Archaea
Spans across the great diversity of organisms existing now and over the long history of life on Earth
Horizontal dimension
Evolutionary theory is useful in what?
Medicine
Agriculture
Forensics
Conservation
What is the hallmark of life?
Diversity
Biologists have identified about how many species?
1.8 million species
Have eukaryotic cells and include single-called protests and multicellular fungi, animals, and plants
Eukarya
Estimates of the actual number of species ranges from?
10 to 100 million species
The most diverse and widespread prokaryotes
Bacteria
What explains the unity and diversity of life?
Evolution
Evolution accounts for life’s dual nature of what?
Kinship and diversity
Scientist use what to draw general conclusions from many observations.
Inductive reasoning
In 1859, Charles Darwin published what?
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
How is a theory different from a hypothesis?
A scientific theory is much broader in scope than a hypothesis, usually general enough to generate many new, specific hypotheses, which can be tested. Supported by a large and usually growing body of evidence
What is a mechanism for evolution?
Natural selection
What is used to ask and answer questions about nature?
Scientific inquiry
As a result of this unequal reproductive success over many generations, an increasing proportion of individuals will have what? And what will the results be?
The advantageous traits and the results will be evolutionary adaptation, the accumulation of favorable traits in a population over time.
A widely accepted explanatory idea that is broader in scope than a hypothesis, generates new hypotheses, and is supported by a large body of evidence
Theory
Those individuals with heritable traits best-suited to the environment are more like to what?
Survive and reproduce than less well-suited individuals
A testable explanation for a set of observations based on the available data guided by inductive reasoning
Hypothesis
Technological advances stem from what
Scientific research
A type of logic in which generalizations are based of a large number of specific observations
Inductive reasoning
What is a way of knowing?
Science
Many issues facing society are related to what? Most involve what?
Biology and our expanding technology
An experiment in which an experimental group is compared with a control group that varies only in the factor being tested
Controlled experiment
The word science is derived from a Latin verb meaning what?
To know
