Chapter 6

Question 1

Inheritance of acquired characteristics

Answer 1

Organisms, by striving to meet the demands of their environments, acquire adaptations and pass them by heredity to their offspring.

Question 2

George louis Buffon

Answer 2

French naturalist who stressed the influence of environment on the modifications of animal form

Question 3

Lemark

Answer 3

proposed evolutionary mechanism and inheritance of acquired characteristics

Question 4

Charles Lyell

Answer 4

Geologist who in his Principles of Geology proposed the principle of uniformatarianism. uniformitarianism encompasses two principles

Question 5

Uniformatarianism

Answer 5

Encompasses two guiding scientific principles. 1) The laws of physics and chemistry have not changed throughout the history of the earth. 2) past geological events occurred by natural processes similar to today.

Question 6

Thomas Malthus

Answer 6

English economist and demographer who presented a theory that population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply and that betterment of humankind is impossible without limitations of reproduction.

Question 7

Galapagos Islands

Answer 7

Darwin’s 5 week visit was the origin of all his views. He quickly understood that Galapagos plants and animals resembled those of South America and continued unique species.

Question 8

Adaptation

Answer 8

Any alteration in the structure of function of an organism or any of its parts that results from natural selection and by which the organism becomes better fitted to survive and reproduce.

Question 9

Fitness

Answer 9

The genetic contribution of any individual to the next generations gene pool relative to the average for the population.

Question 10

Alfred Wallace

Answer 10

Helped bring forward the idea of evolution and played a pivotal role in developing the theory of natural selection.

Question 11

Law of Stratigraphy

Answer 11

the study of how sedimentary rock layers form and their relationship to one another.

Question 12

Radiometric dating

Answer 12

any method of determining the age of earth materials or objects of organic origin based on measurements of either short- lived radioactive elements or the amount of long-lived radioactive element plus its decay product.

Question 13

Homology

Answer 13

the existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures or genes in different taxa.

Question 14

Phylogeny

Answer 14

evolutionary development and history of a species or higher taxonomic grouping of organisms.

Question 15

Ernst Haeckel

Answer 15

German biologist and environmentalist who discovered, named and described thousands of species and mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms.

Question 16

Biogenetic Law

Answer 16

an organism passes through successive stages resembling the series of ancestral types from which it has descended so that the ontogeny of the individual is a recapitulation of the phylogeny of the group.

Question 17

Ernst Mayr

Answer 17

evolutionary biologist who approached the problem with defining a species.

Question 18

Biological Species Concept

Answer 18

defines species in terms of interbreeding. Ernst Mayr defined species as groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups.

Question 19

Heterochrony

Answer 19

developmental change in the timing or rate of events leading to changes in size and shape. Two main components, the onset and offset of a particular process and the rate of the process.

Question 20

Heterotropy

Answer 20

the expression or placement of a gene product from what is typically found in one area to another

Question 21

Macroevolution

Answer 21

variation of allele frequencies at or above the level of a species, where an allele is a specific iteration of a given gene

Question 22

Allopatric Speciation

Answer 22

referred to as geographic speciation or vicariant speciation and is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations of the same species become isolated from each other to an extent that prevents or interferes with genetic interchange.

Question 23

Sympatric Speciation

Answer 23

process through which new species evolve from a single ancestral species while inhabiting the same geographic region

Question 24

Parapatric Speciation

Answer 24

two subpopulations of a species evolve reproductive isolation from one another while continuing to exchange genes.

Question 25

Ring Species

Answer 25

connected series of neighboring populations each of which can interbreed with closely sites related populations but there are two end pops in the end

Question 26

Prezygotic Barriers

Answer 26

is a mechanism that prevents fertilization from occuring

Question 27

Postzygotic Barriers

Answer 27

is a mechanism that reduces the viability or reproductive capacity of hybrid offspring

Question 28

Adaptive Radiation

Answer 28

the diversification of a group of organisms into forms filling different ecological niches

Question 29

Gradualism

Answer 29

evolution proceeds by imperceptibly small cumulative steps over long periods of time rather than by abrupt, major changes.

Question 30

Punctuated Equilibrium

Answer 30

theory in evolutionary biology that proposes once species appear in the fossil record they will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of their geological history.

Question 31

Orthogenesis

Answer 31

theory that variations in evolution follow a particular direction and are not merely sporadic and fortutuous

Question 32

Exaptation

Answer 32

a trait that has been coopted for a use other than the one for which natural selection has built it.

Question 33

Hardy-Weinberg Principle

Answer 33

states that allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of other evolutionary influences

Question 34

Polymorphism

Answer 34

discontinuous genetic variation resulting in the occurrence of several different forms or types of individuals among the members of a single species.

Question 35

Gene Pool

Answer 35

total number of genes of every individual in an interbreeding population. shows genetic diversity

Question 36

Allele Frequencey

Answer 36

measure of the relative frequency of an allele on a genetic locus in a population

Question 37

Genetic Equilibrium

Answer 37

the condition of an allele or genotype in a gene pool where the frequency does not change from generation to generation

Question 38

Directional Selection

Answer 38

mode of natural selection in which an extreme phenotype is favored over other phenotypes causing allele frequency to shift in the direction of that phenotype

Question 39

Stabilizing Selection

Answer 39

opposite of disruptive selection where it favors the intermediate variants.

Question 40

Disruptive Selection

Answer 40

extreme values for a trait are favored over intermediate ones. population is divided into two distinct groups

Question 41

Relative Fitness

Answer 41

survival and or reproductive rate of a genotype relative to the maximum survival and or reproductive rate of other genotypes in a population

Question 42

Inclusive Fitness

Answer 42

measure in terms of survival and reproductive success of its kin, each relative being valued according to the probability of shared genetic information.

Question 43

Sexual Selection

Answer 43

natural selection arising through preference by one sex for certain characteristics in individuals of the other sex

Question 44

Shifting Balance

Answer 44

suggests that adaptive evolution may proceed most quickly when a population divides into subpopulations with restricted gene flow

Question 45

Species Selection

Answer 45

preferential survival and reproduction or preferential elimination of individuals with certain genotypes by means of natural or artificial factors

Question 46

Stephen J. Gould

Answer 46

proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium

Question 47

Microevolutionary vs Macroevolutionary Changes

Answer 47

Macroevolution: refers to major evolutionary changes, the origin of a new species for previously existing, but different ancestral types.
Microevolution: refers to varieties within a given type, change happens within a group but the descendant is clearly of the same ancestor.

Question 48

Microevolution and its mechanisms

Answer 48

Microevolution: changes in allele frequencies within a single pop.
4 mechanisms: natural selection, genetic drift, mutations and gene flow may influence allele frequencies.

Question 49

Disadvantages of using Biological Species Concept

Answer 49

most living species have not been observed mating. Meaning the concept is not applicable to fossil species and asexual organisms.