Natural Selection

Question 1

What is a phenotype?

Answer 1

Physical appearance from inherited information

Question 2

What are alleles?

Answer 2

Different forms of gene

Eg= alleles for gene for eye colour are blue, green, brown etc

Question 3

What are dominant alleles?

Answer 3

Always shown in cells phenotype

Only 1 copy needed for characteristic to be shown

Represented by capital letters
Eg= brown eyes = B

Question 4

What are recessive alleles?

Answer 4

Only shown when 2 copies present

If only 1 present it becomes masked by dominant allele

Shown by lower case letter
Eg= blue eyes = b

Question 5

What is variation?

Answer 5

Individuals in population usually similar not identical

Can be genetic/environmental/both

Question 6

What is genetic variation?

Answer 6

Children are not identical to one parent half inherited features from both parents

Half chromosomes from mother and half from father
Eg= skin colour/ eye colour

Question 7

What is environmental variation?

Answer 7

Factors such as climate/ diet/ culture/ lifestyle etc

Eg= eat too much become fatter/ language/ religion/ flower colour

Question 8

What is both genetic and environmental variation?

Answer 8

Combination of genetic and environmental factors

Eg= twin A and twin B inherit same features from parents but twin A eats more and gets fatter than twin B

Question 9

What is continuous variation?

Answer 9

Any species a characteristic that changes gradually over a range of values

Eg= height/ weight/ hand span

Question 10

What is discontinuous variation?

Answer 10

Characteristic of any species with only limited number of possible values

Eg= gender/ eye colour

Question 11

What is survival pf the fittest?

Answer 11

Best adapted survive and reproduce and genes get passed onto next generation and species gradually evolve