Evolution Flashcards
What is a population?
The same species in an area
What are the mechanisms for evolution?
- Natural selection
- Gene flow
- Genetic drift
- Artificial selection
What mechanisms of evolution lead a population to adapt?
- Natural selection
- Artificial selection
What mechanisms of evolution do not lead a population to adapt?
- Gene flow
- Genetic drift
What is natural selection?
When phenotypes are more likely to be passed on depending on their ability to help an individual survive in an environment
What are the causes of natural selection?
- Competition
- Predation
- Sexual selection
What are the two types of sexual selection?
Intersexual selection
- Choosiness of sexual partners
Intrasexual selection
- Competition between individuals of the same sex for mates
What is gene flow?
Genes leaving and entering the gene pool due to movement
What is genetic drift?
A change in the gene pool strictly by random chance
What is artificial selection?
Selective breeding is controlled by humans to produce the desired trait
What is stabilizing selection?
When the frequency of the extreme phenotype is reduced because predators don’t eat the intermediate phenotypes since they are easiest to see if they are inedible, so the population is skewed in the direction of the intermediate phenotype and the extremes start to decrease in population
What is directional selection?
The inedible species of one extreme phenotype disappears so predators eat the species that mimics it,
this causes a skew in the phenotypes away from the one that disappeared
What is disruptive selection?
When the extreme phenotypes are not eaten by predators so the population of phenotypes that mimic the extreme inedible organisms remains unharmed, the population is skewed in either extreme direction and there are two peaks on either side of the graph
What are homologous structures?
Structures that share similarities because of a common ancestor
What are analogous structures?
Structures that are different b/c they come from different ancestors
What are bottleneck events?
A random event that drastically reduces the size of the population
- A variation of genetic drift
What is the founder effect?
When a small group of a population is separated and isolated from the original population
- Creates a difference in allele frequency from the original population, which can result in speciation
What type of evidence can be used for evolution?
- Geographical (habitats)
- Geological (fossils/isotopes)
- Physical (observable phenotypes)
- Biochemical (DNA/proteins)
- Mathematical (models/simulations)