Developing the ideas on evolution - araxi

Question 1

What did William Paley propose?

Answer 1

Mechanical complexity provided evidence for a divine creator.

Question 2

What did Carolus Linnaeus do?

Answer 2

Classify life into nested hierarchies - a system which is still used today.

Question 3

What evidence sparked ideas for an old and gradually changing Earth?

Answer 3

Patterns in rocks with different types of fossil within each layer.

Question 4

What did William Smith notice?

Answer 4

That different rocks contained different fossils. He also created the first geographical map.

Question 5

What did James Hutton notice?

Answer 5

That observable processes produced small changes that accumulate overtime and that the Earth must be old.

Question 6

What is the idea of Uniformitarianism?

Answer 6

The idea that the changes in the Earth’s crust is a result of continuous and uniform processes.

Question 7

What did Charles Lyell think?

Answer 7

He was a uniformitarianist who thought that the landscapes of hthe Earth were carved by constant and continuous processes over long periods of time.

Question 8

What did paleontology show?

Answer 8

It provided evidence that life has changed.

Question 9

What did Georges Cuvier notice?

Answer 9

That fossils resemble but are not exactly the same as modern species, and that many past species are extinct.

Question 10

What did Georges Buffon think?

Answer 10

That the Earth formed due to laws of physics and chemistry and that it was older than previously thought. He thought life emerged as distinct types and transformed when the environment changed.

Question 11

What did JB Lamarck think?

Answer 11

That life was driven from simple to complex and that complex species descended from microbes. He thought that microbes were continually generated spontaneously and that adaptation occurs through inheritance of acquired changes.

Question 12

Who had pre-Darwin ideas of evolution of species?

Answer 12

Robert Grant and Robert Chambers.

Question 13

What did Darwin do on his voyage of the beagle?

Answer 13

Collected many fossils and living organisms. He studied geology while reading the Principles of Geology by Lyell.

Question 14

What ideas influenced Darwin?

Answer 14

Lyell - earth changes gradually, comparison between embryos shows homologies that are not evident in adults and Malthus and his idea about resources and population constraints.

Question 15

What did Darwin begin to believe on his travels due to noticing differences in beak shape on the galapagos islands?

Answer 15

He thought that species had not been designed but species changed from other ancestral forms.

Question 16

What is evolution of species by descent with modification?

Answer 16

The idea that organisms have variations in a number of traits and that these traits can be passed on from one generation to the next. It refers to changes in the prevalence of these traits in a population over several generations.

Question 17

Give one example of beetles undergoing evolution and one example of beetles changing due to the environment.

Answer 17

Beetles becoming smaller due to a limited food supply (environment) and brown beetles becoming more popular than green beetles (evolution).

Question 18

What did Darwin eventually propose?

Answer 18

That species would evolve in response to pressures from their environment as a result of natural selection. The fittest individuals are more likely to survive and have more offspring whereas weaker individuals don’t make it .

Question 19

What is selection?

Answer 19

Non-random differential survival or reproduction of classes of phenotypically different entities.

Question 20

When does selection exist?

Answer 20

Whenever organisms are competing over finite resources such as food or mating partners, and there are variations in fitness which can be passed onto offspring.

Question 21

What is the difference between selection of something and selection for something?

Answer 21

“For” is the target of selection whereas “of” is an incidental result of the characteristic that is being selected for.

Question 22

What is adaptation?

Answer 22

A character or characteristic that enhances the survival or reproductive success of organisms that exhibit it relative to alternative characters or characteristics.

Question 23

What did Alfred Wallace discover?

Answer 23

That species evolved through natural selection during his travels to the Malay Archipelago. He drafted his paper to Darwin to publish his ideas.

Question 24

What did Darwin’s book say?

Answer 24

Expressed his ideas about descent with modification - species sharing common ancestry and that changes occur due to natural selection.

Question 25

What is a homologous trait?

Answer 25

Traits that are similar due to inheritance from a common ancestor.