Lesson 4

Question 1

Evolution occurs through descent with modification, how is this seen within the fossil record?

Answer 1

Fossils of simple organisms generally appear in the geological record before fossils of complex organisms.

Question 2

What is a homologous feature?

Answer 2

Homologous features are traits shared due to common ancestry

Question 3

What is an analogous feature?

Answer 3

Analogous features are feature between different species that are similar in function and appearance

Question 4

Why do human embryos have gill slits in early development?

Answer 4

They share conserved stages of early ontogeny with other vertebrates, all of which pass through a stage with gill slits before diverging toward different adult morphologies.

Question 5

What is the founder effect?

Answer 5

The founder effect is when a few colonists found a new, isolated population, wherein there phenotype and genotype is not necessarily representative of the variation in the source population.

Question 6

What is a Population bottleneck and how does it effect the gene pool of a species

Answer 6

A population bottleneck or genetic bottleneck is a sharp reduction in the size of a population. Such events can reduce the variation in the gene pool.

Question 7

What are analogous features an example of?

Answer 7

Convergent evolution.

Question 8

What are the 8 biogeographic realms?

Answer 8

Nearctic
Palearctic
Afrotropic
Indomalaya
Australasia
Neotropic
Oceania 
Antarctic

Question 9

What is homoplasty?

Answer 9

Homoplastic traits are essentially analogous traits

Question 10

What is a vestigial feature?

Answer 10

a rudimentary part of the body that has become functionless in the course of evolution

Question 11

What is atavism?

Answer 11

the presence of ancestral features e.g humans with tails