Experimental Design and Natural Selection

Question 1

What is biological fitness

Answer 1

The ability to survive to reproductive age, find a mate, and produce offspring

Question 2

What is directional selection

Answer 2

a mode of natural selection where a single phenotype is favoured, causing allele frequency to continuously shift in one direction

Question 3

What is a gene pool

Answer 3

The combination of all the genes (including alleles) present in a reproducing population or species

Question 4

What is heritable variation

Answer 4

The variance of the breeding values among individuals

Question 5

What is a null hypothesis

Answer 5

proposes that no statistical significance exists in a set of given observations

Question 6

What is an alternate hypothesis

Answer 6

Proposed statement in hypothesis test. Indicates existence of statistical relationship between variables and usually aligns with research hypothesis

Question 7

What is natural selection

Answer 7

process where populations of living organisms adapt and change to their environment
- organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring

Question 8

What is replication

Answer 8

process which the genome’s DNA is copied in cells

Question 9

What is sexual dimorphism

Answer 9

The systematic differences in form between individuals of different sex in the same species

Question 10

What is sexual selection

Answer 10

Natural selection arising through preferences by one sex for certain characteristics in individuals of the other sex

Question 11

What are tradeoffs

Answer 11

A condition which an increase in performance of one trait causes a decrease in the performance of another, given limited amount of available resources

Question 12

What is statistically significant difference

Answer 12

Indicates the difference is unlikely to have occurred by chance

Question 13

What are dependent variables

Answer 13

what is measured in experiment, what is affected

Question 14

What are independent variables

Answer 14

variable changed or controlled in experiment to test the effects of the dependent variable

Question 15

What are standardized variables

Answer 15

variables that stay the same throughout the experiment to see how independent and dependent variables interact with each other

Question 16

What does homosporous mean

Answer 16

produces only one kind of spore

Question 17

What are two conditions needed and sufficient for natural selection

Answer 17

1. heritable phenotypic variation in the population
2. the heritable variation must lead to differential reproductive success

Question 18

what do variegated plants mean

Answer 18

reduced chlorophyll…
- in brassica rapa, trait heritable in chloroplast DNA= maternal inheritance

Question 19

What does a 95% confidence interval mean?

Answer 19

if we repeated this study 100 times we would expect the mean value to fall with these bars 95/100 times

Question 20

What does it mean if confidence intervals overlap

Answer 20

difference between the mean values are not statistically significant

Question 21

What does it mean if confidence intervals don’t overlap?

Answer 21

it is statistically significant

Question 22

What is the tradeoff with energy investments in reproductive structures

Answer 22

• energy used - less energy to invest in growth and accumulation of stored reserves
• reproduce early and a lot