Chapter 15: Processes of Evolution Flashcards

1
Q

What is evolutionary theory?

A

It is a bundle of theories

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2
Q

Who was Jean Baptiste Lamark?

A

He was an evolutionary biologist that studied the evolution giraffes neck.

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3
Q

Charles Darwin was the first of what?

A

He was the first one to articulate a plausible mechanism for evolution that was derived from different fields of study.

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4
Q

What is Thomas Robert Malthus known for?

A

Population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food
supply is linear. Only a fraction of any population will
survive and reproduce.

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5
Q

Uniformitarianism Theory

A

is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe

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6
Q

What did Darwin do in 1831?

A

He began a 5-year voyage around the world on a

Navy survey vessel, the HMS Beagle.

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7
Q

What did Charles Darwin discover during his five-year journey?

A

The finches beaks were all different from each other and had different functions

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8
Q

What are the three thories Darwin made up?

A
  1. Species change over time due to environmental changes
  2. Divergent species share a common ancestor
  3. The mechanism that produces change in natural selection (testable)
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9
Q

What is the essence of Darwin’s natural selection theory?

A
  1. Heritability (it has to be passed on)
  2. Variation is needed to evolve
  3. competition for survival of species
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10
Q

Why is natural selection so important?

A

It is the first evolutionary theory that could be tested

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11
Q

What does the evolutionary term “Fitness” refer to?

A

It refers to the individual’s ability to leave an offspring and allows the individual to survive and reproduce

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12
Q

What is evolutionary fitness?

A

It is the number of offspring plus the number of future descendants

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13
Q

Indirect fitness/inclusive fitness

A

An indirect way for an organism to pass on their genes from a sibling who has an offspring

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14
Q

What is adaptation in terms of evolution?

A

The adjustment or changes in behavior, physiology, and structure of an organism to become more suited to an environment.

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15
Q

What are the two simple rules of Natural Selection?

A
  1. Evolution doesn’t have to be elegant, it just has to work

2. evolved organisms can have defects as long as they can still survive and reproduce

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16
Q

What is modern synthesis?

A

describes the fusion (merger) of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution that resulted in a unified theory of evolution

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17
Q

Population

A

a group of individuals of a single species that live and interbreed in a particular geographic area at the same ti time

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18
Q

Mutations

A
  1. Occur randomly

2. Can be deleterious, beneficial, or neutral (have no effect)

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19
Q

Deleterious

A

Something that can kill

20
Q

Recombination

A

is a process by which pieces of DNA are broken and recombined to produce new combinations of alleles

21
Q

Gene Flow

A

Migration or mating of individuals between populations that introduces variation

22
Q

Genetic Drift

A

is a mechanism of evolution in which allele frequencies of a population change over generations due to chance (sampling error). It is faster in smaller population

23
Q

Population Bottlenecks

A

occur when a random disaster occurs and a few individuals survives (passes through a narrow neck of a bottle)

24
Q

Founder effect

A

Occurs when new individuals that find a new place to live and colonize (special bottleneck)

25
Q

Allele Frequencies

A

refers to how common an allele is in a population. It is determined by counting how many times the allele appears in the population then dividing by the total number of copies of the gene.

26
Q

Gene Pool of a Population

A

consists of all the copies of all the genes in that population

27
Q

Genotype Frequencies

A

shows how a population’s genetic variation is distributed among its members

28
Q

Biological evolution

A

Refers to changes in the genetic makeup of populations over time

29
Q

Sexual Selection

A

Occurs when individuals of one sex mate preferentially with a particular individual of the opposite sex

30
Q

Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

A

allele frequency = the number of copies of the allele in the population divided by the total number of copies of all alleles in the population

31
Q

What are to conditions that must be met for a population to be at Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium?

A
  1. There is no mutation
  2. There is no selection among genotypes
  3. There is no gene flow
  4. Population size is infinite
  5. Mating is random
32
Q

Qualitative traits

A
influenced by alleles at one locus; often
discrete qualities (black vs white, smooth vs wrinkled).
33
Q

Quantitative traits

A

influenced by alleles at more than one

locus; likely to show continuous variation (body size)

34
Q

Stabilizing selection

A

Acts to reduce variation without changing the mean value of a trait (birth weight)

35
Q

Directional selection

A

Acts to shift the mean value of a trait toward one extreme ( Texas Longhorn cattle)

36
Q

Disruptive selection

A

favors both extremes of trait values, resulting in a bimodal character distribution ( bill size in the black-bellied seedcracker of West Africa.)

37
Q

The Paradox of Sex

A

Sexual reproduction results in new combinations of genes and produces a genetic variety that increases evolutionary potential.

38
Q

Purifying Selection

A

Selection against any deleterious mutations to the usual gene sequence

39
Q

What are the disadvantages of the paradox of sex?

A
  1. Recombination can break up adaptive combinations of
    genes
    2.Reduces the rate at which females pass genes to offspring
  2. Dividing offspring into genders reduces the overall
    reproductive rate
40
Q

Muller’s ratchet

A

In the absence of genetic recombination, deleterious mutations accumulate with each replication

41
Q

Sexual recombination does not directly influence the

frequencies of alleles. Rather, what does it do?

A

it generates new combinations of alleles on which natural selection can act.

42
Q

Synonymous substitution

A

don’t affect phenotype because most amino acids are specified by more than one codon

43
Q

Nonsynonymous substitution

A

changes the result of amino acids and can be deleterious, selectively neutral, or (more rarely) advantageous

44
Q

pseudogenes

A

copies of genes that are no longer functional

45
Q

Lateral Gene Transfer

A

individual genes, organelles, or genome fragments move horizontally from one lineage to another. this can be advantageous to species