Definitions

Question 1

What is anthropology?

Answer 1

The study of all aspects of the human experience

Question 2

What are the four subfields of anthropology?

Answer 2

cultural anthropology
linguistic anthropology
biological anthropology
archaeology

Question 3

What is pre-existing variation?

Answer 3

traits which can be passed to off-spring

Question 4

What is inheritance?

Answer 4

capable of being passed to off-spring biologically

Question 5

What is reproductive success?

Answer 5

a measure of the number of surviving off-spring an organism has

Question 6

What is phenotype?

Answer 6

observable, measurable characteristics of an organism

Question 7

What is morphology?

Answer 7

the internal and external form and structure of an organism

Question 8

What is phylogeny?

Answer 8

the evolutionary history of a group of organisms

Question 9

What is ancestral trait?

Answer 9

characteristic found in an ancestor and all (or most) of its descendants

Question 10

What is derived trait?

Answer 10

characteristic found only in one descendent branch and not in the ancestral form

Question 11

What is shared derived trait?

Answer 11

characteristic found in more than one, but not all, descendant forms and not in the common ancestor

Question 12

What is a gene?

Answer 12

segment of DNA that contains the sequence for a protein

Question 13

What is a chromosome?

Answer 13

complex structures that house the supercoiled DNA in the nucleus

Question 14

What is mitosis?

Answer 14

the process of cell division and replication

Question 15

What is meiosis?

Answer 15

the production of gametes (haploid cells)

Question 16

What is recombination?

Answer 16

shuffling of maternal and paternal chromosomes during meiosis

Question 17

What is a codon?

Answer 17

a three-nucleotide sequence in which the DNA’s triplet code is written onto the mRNA

Question 18

What is a protein?

Answer 18

building blocks of organic life

Question 19

What is an amino acid?

Answer 19

building blocks of protein

Question 20

What is an allele?

Answer 20

a variant sequence of nucleotides in a gene; a form of a gene

Question 21

What is homozygous?

Answer 21

the state of having the same allele at both loci for the same gene

Question 22

What is heterozygous?

Answer 22

the state of having different alleles at both loci for the same gene

Question 23

What is population?

Answer 23

cluster of individuals of the same species who share a common geographical area and find their mates more often in their own clusters than others

Question 24

What is nonrandom mating?

Answer 24

pattern of mating in which individuals mate preferentially with certain others

Question 25

What is the founder effect?

Answer 25

evolutionary process in which a small group of individuals account for all of the genetic variation in a large population

Question 26

What is niche construction theory?

Answer 26

the modification of niches by organisms and the mutual interactions between organisms and environments

Question 27

What is allopatric speciation?

Answer 27

mode of speciation that involves a separation and isolation of populations of the parent species

Question 28

What is the difference between paleospecies and living species?

Answer 28

paleospecies is a species defined on the basis of fossil evidence living species we can study their mating patterns to decipher between species

Question 29

What is comparative primatology?

Answer 29

the study of our closest living relatives, the primates, for the purpose of understanding aspects of our own behavior

Question 30

What is home range?

Answer 30

area used by a primate group or community

Question 31

What is dominance?

Answer 31

set of relationships that results in different relative abilities to acquire desired resources

Question 32

What is altruism?

Answer 32

acting in a way that has a net loss of energy to the actor and a net benefit in energy to the receiver

Question 33

What is matrifocal?

Answer 33

based on the mother as the head of the family

Question 34

What is estrus?

Answer 34

- behavioral and physiological sexual receptivity