Definitions

Question 1

adaptation (noun)

Answer 1

any characteristic of an organism that improves its survival and reproduction in its local environment

Question 2

adaptation (verb)

Answer 2

the process by which adaptations are produced

Question 3

adaptationist stance

Answer 3

the strategy assuming that the characteristics or behaviors displayed by an organism enhanced ancestral reproductive success, and forming hypotheses about how they did so

Question 4

allele

Answer 4

an alternative form of a gene or other DNA sequence

Question 5

alloparenting

Answer 5

parental care provided to offspring that are not the individual’s own

Question 6

altruism

Answer 6

behaviour that has a positive effect on another individual’s lifetime reproductive success and a negative effect on the actor’s own lifetime reproductive success

Question 6

altruism

Answer 6

behaviour that has a positive effect on another individual’s lifetime reproductive success and a negative effect on the actor’s own lifetime reproductive success

Question 7

amino acid

Answer 7

molecular building block of proteins.

20 main types

Question 8

analogy

Answer 8

a characteristic present in 2 or more different species that does not derive from their common ancestor, but is instead due to convergent evolution

Question 9

anisogamy

Answer 9

sexual reproduction involving gametes of different sizes, a small one (male) and a large one (female)

Question 10

association study

Answer 10

the frequency of alleles in a sample of individual with a particular phenotypic characteristic is compared with the frequency in a sample who lack the characteristic, in hope of localising a genomic region involved

Question 11

Australopithecines

Answer 11

extinct hominins found in Africa between 4 - 1 million years ago. they were more bipedal than chimpanzes, but their brains were no larger. probably multiple species or genera.

Question 12

baldwin effect

Answer 12

interaction between learning and genetic evolution, in which the capacity of the animal to learn allows genetic adaptations to be selected for, which would not otherwise be able to evolve. may involve genetic assimilation

Question 13

base

Answer 13

nucleotide units in DNA.
Adenine
Guanine
cytosine
thymine

Question 14

bateman’s principle

Answer 14

males gain more reproductive success from each additional mating partner than refmales do and, relatedly, the variance in male reproductive success is larger than female reproductive success.
Only holds where the total investment in each reproductive episode is lower for males than females

Question 15

brachiation

Answer 15

locomotion through trees by swinging from the arms

Question 16

broad sense heritability

Answer 16

estimate that includes all sources of genetic influence, that is additive, dominance and epistatic

Question 17

catarrhines

Answer 17

the monkeys and apes of the old world

Question 18

central dogma of genetics

Answer 18

the that changes in DNA sequence can lead to changes in proteins, but changes in proteins cannot change the sequence of DNA

alternations in the genotype lead to alternations in the phenotype, but alternations in the phenotype do not generally lead to alternations in the genotype

Question 19

cheating

Answer 19

taking benefits of joint ventures without paying the cost

Question 20

co-dominant

Answer 20

of two alleles, when one copy of each is present, both are expressed in the phenotype

Question 21

coefficient of additive genetic variance

Answer 21

a statistic estimating the amount of additive genetic variation in a population that affects particular phenotypic traits. Differs from heritability by being independent of the amount of environmental variation affecting the trait

Question 22

coefficient of relatedness

Answer 22

the probability that the alleles which two individuals have at a locus are identical by descent. it can also be thought of as the sizes of the expected increment in genetic similarity between two relatives above and beyond that expected for two unrelated individuals

Question 23

convergent evolution

Answer 23

the process whereby a similar characteristic evolves independently in different species due to the same selection pressures being at work in each case

Question 24

cumulative cultural evolution

Answer 24

the existence of socially learned traditions which become more complex and better adapted overtime

Question 25

developmental induction

Answer 25

a type of phenotypic plasticity where environmental cues early in life switch the organism onto a permanently different developmental track

Question 26

direct reciprocity

Answer 26

a form of cooperation in which individual A provides a benefit to individual B and vice versa

Question 27

directional selection

Answer 27

the mode of selection in which the highest fitness is found in individuals either above (positive) or below (negative) the average population value of the characteristic

Question 28

dominance effects

Answer 28

increases in phenotypic similarity when both alleles at a locus are shared by 2 individuals above and beyond the sum of the increases in phenotypic similarity when either one or the other is shared.