Evolution Flashcards
The genetic change in a population or species over generations
Evolution
Evolutionary processes work at the __________ level
Population
___________ is the ongoing process through which the characteristics of species change and through which new species arise
Evolution
Species are fixed, permanent forms that do not change over time
Plato & Aristotle
Evolution as the refinement of traits that equip organisms to
perform successfully in their environments. Proposed that by
using or not using its body parts, an individual may develop
certain traits that it passes on to its offspring.
Lamarck
many naturalists were grappling with the interpretation
of fossils, imprints & remains of organisms that lived in the
past; the idea that some organisms had become extinct was
becoming accepted.
Uncounted Others
Scottish naturalist, proposed that geological change occurred gradually by the accumulation of small changes from processes (over long periods of time) just like those happening today in Theory of the Earth
James Hutton
popularized Hutton’s view in the nineteenth century in
Principles of Geology.
Charles Lyell
an economist who wrote An Essay on the Principle of
Population in 1798, an influential essay on the competition for
limited resources
Thomas Malthus
Primed acceptance of the idea of evolution as a process proceeding according to determinable principles
Industrial Revolution
The selective breeding of domesticated plants and
animals to promote the occurrence of desirable traits in the offspring.
Artificial Selection
two essential components of artifical selection
variation & heritability
VH
_________ was independently conceived of and described by two naturalists, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, in the mid-nineteenth century
Mechanism for evolution
process by which organisms with certain inherited characteristics are more likely to survive and reproduce than are organisms with other characteristics; unequal reproductive success individuals with certain inherited traits are more likely to survive and reproduce than are individuals with other traits. Works on individuals to alter the population
Natural Selection
Modifications the occur due to natural selection
that fit organisms to their environment
Evolutionary Adaptations
given that resources of any environment are limited, the
production of more individuals than the environment can
support leads to a struggle for existence, with only some
offspring surviving in each generation, i.e., those with best
traits to compete for the limited resources.
Fitness
Darwin observed that beak shape
varies among finch species. He
postulated that the beak of an
ancestral species had adapted over
time to equip the finches to acquire different food sources.
Darwin’s Finches
imprints or remains of organisms that lived in the past
Fossils
similarity in characteristics
resulting from a shared ancestry
Homologous Structures