Theme 1 Phylogeny and Evolution Flashcards
What are the 3 main components of Biodiversity?
- Genetic Diversity
- Species Diversity
- Ecosystem Diversity
What are the 4 main threats to biodiversity?
1.Habitat loss
2. Invasive species
3.Overexploitation
4. Climate Change
Provisioning Services
Raw resources ie food, medicine, fibres, fuels
Regulating Services
Benefits beyond raw resources ie pollination, pest control, purification of water and air
What are ecosystem Supporting Services?
Ecosystem services critical to the survival of the biosphere ie habitats, cycling of nutrients and biomass and production of oxygen
Inductive Reasoning
Used to make generalizations from specific observations and propose hypotheses
What is Deductive Reasoning?
Used to make specific predictions to test hypotheses
Hypothesis vs Theory
Hypotheses: narrow-scoped, tentative, are explanatory
Theories: Broad-scoped, strongly supported by large body of evidence, often leads to new testable hypotheses ie. predictive
How do we test different hypotheses?
The scientific method
Taxonomy
Scienitific discipline of naming and classifying organisms
Systematics
A system and practice of classifying organisms based on evolutionary history
What are the main principles of Natural Selection?
- There are more offspring produced than can possibly survive in the environment, which will cause competition
- There is inheritable variation within a population
- Successful traits will accumulate over many generations (evolution)
List the main pieces of evidence which support Evolutionary Theory
- Direct observation (often with organisms with short lifespans)
- Molecular and morphological homologies (similarities)
- Fossil Records
- Biogeography (study of organisms based on geographic distribution)
What is the phenotype?
Interaction of the genotype and environmental factors
List the 2 main sources of genetic variation
- Mutations (UV radiation, point mutations, etc)
- Meiosis causing reshuffling of homologous chromosomes
Factors that affect allele frequency and whether they’re adaptive or not
- Natural Selection (adaptive)
- Genetic Drift (e.g bottleneck or founder effect)
- Gene Flow
What is a phylogeny?
A relationship between organisms sharing a common ancestor
It is also a hypothesis
What is a polytomy?
A region on a phylogeny with 2+ sister lineages
-represents unresolved divergence patterns
-also represents rapid speciation
- mono*phyletic group
- paraphyletic group
- polyphyletic group
red- polypyletic
blue-paraphyletic
yellow-monophyletic/clade
Difference between synapomorphy and symplesiomorphy
synapormorphy: a derived character shared by taxa and their last (most recent) common ancestory
symplesiomorphy: ancestral character shared by taxa, from an ancestory older than the most recent
Note these terms are relative, a character can be both
What are characters?
Anatomical, physiol, molecular features
Homology vs analogy
Homologous- shared evolutionary history
analogous -similar function but evolved sepparately
Which traits are used to construct a phyolgeny?
Only homologous, not analogous
duhh
Which factors, that alter allele frequency are more common in smaller populations?
Genetic drift - less gene carriers = higher chance of losing gene