Exam #1 Flashcards
cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or skills greatly overestimate their ability in that domain relative to objective criteria (“you don’t know what you don’t know”)
Dunning Kruger effect
change in living things by descent with modification; requires a change in allele frequencies through time
biological (organic) evolution
an educated conclusion based on experiments (one scientist can create this)
hypotheses
hypotheses once they have been tested and verified and support/never refuted, an explanation of a set of related observations based upon tested hypotheses
theories
something that has really occurred or is actually the case, test is verifiability
fact
takes events and makes generalizations
inductive reasoning
arrives at a specific conclusion based on generalizations
deductive reasoning
evolution as a process and natural selection as a mechanism
Darwin’s theory
proposed the 1st naturalist idea of the origin of species
Empedolcles
nothing exists beyond the natural universe, rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe that the universe is a product of these laws
natural laws
methodological naturalism and natural laws
Anaximander
“every object on earth is an imperfect copy of an ideal form”
-did not recognize change in species over time
Plato
proposed “Ladder of Life” (Gods are at the top), everything can be ordered by complexity, implied that things could change
Aristotle
discover role of a creator, change could happen only with the creators action
Natural Theology
-father of taxonomy
-proponent of Natural Theology
-believed that nature did not change
Linnaeus
Earth has been affected in the past/ present by worldwide sudden, short violent events
catastrophe
new species created after catastrophe
catastrophe creation
world is roughly 6000 years old
Usser
- too many strata to be consistent with a single event
- species seen in different strata were linked
transmutation
rejected Usser; God created the original forms that “transmutated” or evolved
transmutative creationist
proposed that all life originated in the sea
De Saussure
-father of biogeography (accepted and promoted that the earth was very old)
-made species in perfect forms and through time they may have both “improved” and “degenerated”
-noted similarities between great apes and humans
Buffon
-professor of inferior Zoology
-defined many groups we use today (first tree of life)
-emphasized great age of Earth (species did not go extinct)
-1st mechanism of transmutation: dictated by the environment, inheritance of acquired characters
Lamarck
despite similar environments, different regions have distinct plants and animals
Buffon’s Law (1st principle of biogeography)
formulated one of the earliest formal hypotheses of evolution
E. Darwin
political economist (population size and food supply goes hand and hand)
Malthus
-father of Paleontology (things alive today are not in the fossil record and extinction as a regular process)
-catastrophism: believed God created every individual organism but the earth was far older than 6000 years
Cuvier
Earth formed slowly and all the features of the Earth formed slowly
uniformitarianism
influenced by Malthus
-proposed a form of selection driven by environmental pressure
-this selection pressure could drive the formation of new species
Mathews
excellent naturalist
-artificial selection
-fossils
-Galapagos islands
C. Darwin
domesticated variants of species are more variable than different species in the wild
artificial selection
resembles living species of the same area, not species of another area
fossils
-palaeobotanist with the geological survey of great britain
-botanist
-would later defended the idea of Natural Selection against adversaries
Hooker
father of modern geology (slow and gradual)
-developed the Law of Stratiography: oldest rock layers are the deepest, the youngest are the most superficial
-formalized uniformitarianism
Lyell
excellent naturalist
-warning coloration in animals
-“wallace effect”
-insect taxonomy
-now seen as the father of biogeography
Wallace
transformational process, every member changes
lamarckian
variational process, only a selected few change
darwinian
we know when ideas are wrong when they lack this
-idea proposed by Karl Popper
corroboration
members of a population show variation in traits
variation in traits
offspring tend to resemble their parents
heredity
since the environment can’t support unlimited population growth, not all individuals get to reproduce to their full potential
differential reproduction
natural selection conditions
- variation in traits
- heredity
- differential reproduction
-gradual, non random process
-biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproductive success of alleles of their bearers
-adaptations are products
natural selection
product of natural selection are traits or suites of traits that are shaped by forces of natural selection acting on genetic variation
adaptations
endowed with phenotypic characteristics which improve chances of survival and reproduction
fittest
primary sources of genetic variation (3 total)
- mutations
- gene flow
- recombinant sex
changes in DNA, even a single change can have a large effect
mutations
movement of genes from one population to another (immigration/emigration)
gene flow
introduces new gene combinations into a population (crossing over)
recombinant sex
variation in natural populations, individuals of a natural population will be found to vary for almost any character we may measure
morphological level
variation within a population in which distinct morphologies fall into a limited number of categories
discrete variation
variation within a population in which a graded series of intermediate morphologies fall between the extremes
continuous variation
how variations occur
- morphological level
- cellular level
- biochemical level
- base pair level
pattern of phenotypic expression of a single genotype across a range of environments, natural selection does not directly sort on genotypes or phenotypes but on variation of where the two meet the environment
norm of reaction
invokes the supernatural
-not science (not driven by hypothesis testing)
-holds no explanatory power (creator is well designed and adaptively complex)
divine creation
mechanism of hereditary
-scientific (driven by hypothesis testing)
-not supported by the data
-explanatory power is weak
inheritance of acquired features
how do we determine if a trait is adaptive?
- experimentation
- observational studies
- comparative methods
reasons why adaptations can be imperfect
- time lags; natural selection can’t operate as fast as the environmental changes
- genetic constraints; heterozygote advantage
- developmental constraints; future mutations will be constrained based on current morphological and genetic availability
field of science that encompasses the description, identification, nomenclature, and classification of organisms
taxonomy
study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationship among living things through time
systematics
study of evolutionary relationships among groups of organisms, which are discovered through data analyses
phylogenetics
-naturalis historia: one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman empire of the modern day
-encompasses the field of botany, zoology, astronomy, geology and mineralogy as well as the exploitation of those resources
-covers the entire field of ancient knowledge
Elder
-Italian physician, philosopher and botanist
-classified plants according to their fruits an seeds, rather than alphabetically or medical properties
-one of the most important in the history of botany before Linnaeus
Cesalpino
father of modern taxonomy, fundamental in developing modern ecology
-systema naturae: established of universally accepted conventions for the naming or organisms
Linne
most inclusive unit
domain
least inclusive unit
species
Don’t Kick Puppies Cause Old Folks Get Sad
Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species
-unites taxonomy and classification in a way that reflects evolutionary history
-Cladistic Methodology
-creates an explicit, testable hypothesis and data set for evolution
Henning
What is a phylogeny
-best hypothesis about relationships available
=phylogeny: hypothesis
=characters: data
-takes into consideration as much data as possible: morphology, behavior, embryology, genetics
where organisms lie
terminals or leaves
represent relationships through time
branches
represent coalesce at a common ancestor
branching points or “nodes”
group of organisms derived from a single common ancestor
clade
create classification schemes that are stable to the addition of new data (only classification schemes based on evolutionary relationship are stable to the addition)
goal of modern systemics
all descendants of a common ancestor
monophyletic group
some descendants of a common ancestor
paraphyletic group
some descendants of one ancestor and some descendants of another ancestor
polyphyletic group
list of features to be analyzed (the data broadly)
characters
specific condition for each species (the data specifically)
character states
-establishes monophyly of the ingroup
-determines character polarity
outgroup
character shared between two or more species that was present in their common ancestor
homology
character shared between two or more species that was not present in their common ancestor, similar due to convergences
homoplasy
character that is present before the last common ancestor of the species group, all descendants of an ancestor have that character
plesiomorphic
character that is derived within the lineage of study, only some animals have that character
synapomorphic
plurality should not be posited without necessity
Ockham’s Razor
introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities; minimize homoplasy and maximize homology
Principle of Parsimony
never assume convergent or parallel evolution; always assume homology in the absence of contrary evidence
Henning’s Auxiliary Principle
