Patterns of evolution

Question 1

What is cladogenesis?

Answer 1

one lineage spilts into two descendant lineages

Question 2

What is anagenesis?

Answer 2

gradual evolutionary changes within one single lineage

Question 3

What is gradualism? (not in the geology sense)

Answer 3

Gradual change over time

Question 4

What is punctuated equilibrium?

Answer 4

periods of little to no evolutionary change followed by rapid change following a catastrophe

Question 5

What is pseudoextinction?

Answer 5

A taxon changes by anagenesis until it is so different from the ancestor it is classified as something else, but the ancestor became the descendent instead of actually going extinct

Question 6

How does ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny?

Answer 6

Ancestral traits can be present in the embryo/larvae, but absent in the adult form

Question 7

What is heterochrony?

Answer 7

An evolutionary change in phenotype caused by a change in the timing of developmental events

Question 8

Which type of cells typically grows faster, somatic or germ-line?

Answer 8

Somatic

Question 9

What is paedomorphosis?

Answer 9

A larval stage becomes sexually mature without gaining its adult characteristics

Question 10

What are the two types of paedomorphosis?

Answer 10

Progenesis and neoteny

Question 11

What is progenesis?

Answer 11

When the development of reproductive cells gets accelerated and causes growth of the organism to stop sooner

Question 12

What is neoteny?

Answer 12

When the development of the somatic cells slows down and a larval stage reaches sexual maturity without its adult characteristics

Question 13

What is adaptive radiation?

Answer 13

Diversification of a lineage into forms that fill different niches rapidly in all directions

Question 14

Why is adaptive radiation probably the most common pattern of long-term evolution?

Answer 14

It happens following any extinction event

Question 15

What is a species flock?

Answer 15

A group of closely related individuals all living in the same ecosystem

Question 16

How do species flocks occur?

Answer 16

Repeated speciation events in a single ancestral species that caused it to diversify in the same ecosystem - the cichlids

Question 17

What distinguishes a species flock from other members of the same species not part of the flock?

Answer 17

They have one or more synapomorphies that relatives outside the flock don’t have

Question 18

What is Mullerian mimicry? Who benefits? Which of the two species is more numerous?

Answer 18

Both species are poisonous or distasteful, and they reinforce the same signals to predators. Both benefit and they are both in roughly equal proportions

Question 19

What is Batesian mimicry? Who benefits? Which of the two species is more numerous?

Answer 19

Only one species is dangerous, the other is harmless and is mimicking the colours or behaviours of the dangerous one. Only the mimic benefits and there are usually a lot less of them

Question 20

What is pseudocopulation?

Answer 20

A flower mimics a female insect and the male pollinates the flower when he tries to copulate