Chapter 13: How Populations Evolve Flashcards
Aristotle believed…
life is fixed
describe Lamarkian Inheritance
- inheritance of acquired characteristics
- lineages don’t go extinct
What helped shape the theory of evolution and natural selection?
worldwide voyages
list some observations from travels?
- organisms within geographic proximity are more similar
- the planet is changing
- fossils resemble individuals extinct to a region
Darwin called his theory
descent with modification
decent with modifications explains
- all life is connected by a common ancestor
- descendants have accumulated adaptations
define a theory…
a widely accepted explanatory idea
fossil record provides evidence for
evolution
3 characteristics of fossils
- imprints of past organisms
- document differences between past and present organisms
- reveals that many species are extinct
in the late 1970s paleontologists thought whales arose from
a wolf-like carnivore
define homology
similarity due to shared ancestry between a pair of structures or genes
what reveals evolutionary relationships?
structural and molecular homologies
DNA also shares
evolutionary history
define vestigial structures
remnants of features that serve important functions in the organisms ancestor
define evolutionary tree
branch diagram showing the evolutionary relationship among organisms
define the nodes of an evolutionary tree
represents the common ancestor
define the hatch of an evolutionary tree
the shared homologous structure
define a clade of an evolutionary tree.
all organisms that share a common ancestor
Darwin proposed what as the mechanism of evolution?
natural selection
What was Darwin’s greatest contribution to biology?
his explanation of how life evolves
artificial selection shows insights into…
how incremental change occurs
Difference between artificial selection and natural selection?
artificial selection can bring change in a short period of time
natural selection modifies species over thousands of generations
What is heritable?
natural variation in a population
overtime favorable traits…
accumulate in a population
list the 3 key points to natural selection
- the population, not the individual, evolves
- natural selection ONLY acts on heritable traits
- evolution is not goal directed
evolution is AKA
change in allele frequencies
What is an example of natural selection in action?
- the evolution of pesticide resistance in hundreds of insect species
- human resistance to antibiotics
give 2 examples of how natural selection can be observed in natural populations
- Galapagos finches and drought
2. black snakes and invasive toads
evolutionary adaptation relies on the…
available genetic material
examples of available genetic material include?
- changes in allele frequencies through time
- varying population that fits the current and local environment
What produces the genetic variation that makes evolution possible?
mutation and sexual reproduction
Organisms typically show…
individual variation
Define mutations…
the ultimate source of genetic variation that serves as raw material for evolution
an alteration or change in DNA sequence
In organisms that reproduce sexually, where does most of the genetic variation in that population come from?
the unique recombination of alleles inherited by each individual