midterm

Question 1

the proper title of darwin’s famous book

Answer 1

on the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life

Question 2

alfred russel wallace - why so many mentions?

Answer 2

he independently arrived at the same conclusions as darwin

Question 3

which of the following disciplines did NOT influence darwin as he developed his theory of natural selection?

Answer 3

genetics

Question 4

which of the following is a good example of a vestigial structure?

Answer 4

hip bones in whales

Question 5

which of the following is a good example of morphological homology?

Answer 5

structural similarities in tetrapod forelimbs

Question 6

as a general rule in paleontology, the further down you dig

Answer 6

the older the deposits you encounter

Question 7

assuming you can find fossils in most deposits, evolutionary theory predicts that

Answer 7

the further down you dig, the older the deposits, the more different the fossils will be to modern organisms.

Question 8

lovettia is a genus of galaxiid fish native to australia and tasmania. of all the genera in family galaxiddae, the one most closely related to lovettia is aplochiton, a genus exclusively founded in south america, over 9,000 km away. what best explains this pattern?

Answer 8

australia and south america were once connected as a single land mass but have since drifted apart.

Question 9

consider how the genome of staphylococcus aureus has evolved in response to antibiotics (figure 22.14) which of the following gene families have NOT experienced strong selection in this bacterium?

Answer 9

genes that increase bacterial reproduction rate

Question 10

when golden rain trees were introduced to florida, average beak lengths on soapberry bugs decreased. why?

Answer 10

soapberry bugs with shorter beaks were more able to survive and reproduce

Question 11

evolution has been directly observed in

Answer 11

lab experiments, in the field (ex. nature), in artifical contexts such as farming or animal breeding

Question 12

south asia and Australia are two major faunal regions that are delimited by

Answer 12

the wallace line

Question 13

the discovery of eopigenetics vindicated lamarck because epigenetics showed that

Answer 13

some acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring

Question 14

publication year of the origin of species is

Answer 14

1859

Question 15

on the galapagos islands, darwin noticed that ecological niches that were filled by many different kinds of birds on the mainland were almost exclusively filled by finches on the islands. his explanation for this pattern is that

Answer 15

an ancestral group of finches initially colonized the islands and subsequently diversified as they adapted to the food sources available on the islands

Question 16

the modern synthesis of the 1940s and 1950s was an effort by evolutionary biologists to combine

Answer 16

darwinian ideas of evolution via natural selection with mandelian genetics

Question 17

what was the major contribution of linnaeus to science?

Answer 17

he devised a useful strategy to name and classify organisms

Question 18

what do cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts all have in common?

Answer 18

humans made them from mustard plants via selective breeding practices