Evolution Flashcards
Define evolution.
descent with modification
What did Linnaeus found?
taxonomy, the branch of biology concerned with classifying organisms
What did Cuvier do?
Paleontology, the study of fossils, was largely developed by French scientist Georges Cuvier
What are fossils?
Fossils are remains or traces of organisms from the past, usually found in sedimentary rock, which appears in layers or strata.
What did lamarck hypothesize?
that species evolve through use and disuse of body parts and the inheritance of acquired characteristics
What did wallace do?
developed a theory of natural selection similar to Darwin’s
What are darwin’s two main ideas?
Descent with modification explains life’s unity and diversity.
Natural selection is a cause of adaptive evolution.
What is artificial selection?
humans have modified other species by selecting and breeding individuals with desired traits
Darwin’s Observations and Inferences
- Members of a population often vary greatly in their traits.
2.Traits are inherited from parents to offspring. - All species are capable of producing more offspring than the environment can support.
- Overproduction leads to competition for food or other resources.
Inference #1: Individuals whose inherited traits give them a higher probability of surviving and reproducing in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than other individuals.
Inference #2: This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favorable traits in the population over generations.
Who was Thomas Malthus?
noted the potential for human population to increase faster than food supplies and other resources
What is survival of the fittest?
Individuals with certain heritable adaptive characteristics survive and reproduce at a higher rate than other individuals.
What is natural selection?
increases the adaptation of organisms to their environment over time
What is speciation?
If an environment changes over time, natural selection may result in adaptation to these new conditions and may give rise to new species.
Describe evolution of drug resistant HIV.
The drug 3TC is designed to interfere and cause errors in the manufacture of DNA from the virus.
Some individual HIV viruses have a variation that allows them to produce DNA without errors. These viruses have greater reproductive success.
The population of HIV viruses has therefore developed resistance to 3TC.
What is homology?
similarity resulting from common ancestry
