Unit I: Intro to Evolution Flashcards
What is evolution?
change in allele frequencies of a population across generations
What processes cause evolution?
- Natural selection
- Genetic drift
- Migration
- Mutation
What is Natural Selection?
- reproduction of individuals with favorable genetic traits that survive environmental change because of those traits, leading to evolutionary change
What is Variation?
genetic differences among individuals in a population
What are the 4 Postulated of Natural Selection?
- Variation exists among individual organisms in a population
- Some of that variation is heritable
- Survival and reproduction success is variable
- Individuals best able to survive and reproduce is not a random sample
Explain Postulate 3 of Natural Selection.
- Populations produce more offspring than can survive
- Resource limit populations, lead to struggle for existence
- Some individuals reproduce more than others
What is a Polygenic Trait?
controlled by multiple genes
(ex: expressions of Bmp4 which effects width and depth)
What is Adaptation?
heritable traits or behavior in an organism that aids in its survival and reproduction in its present environment
Note: that environments change, and thus the trait that is adaptive can also change
What is Heredity?
the transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to offspring
What is heritability?
the fraction of population variation that can be attributed to its genetic variance
What did Gregor Mendel discovery?
(1822-1884)
- Each parent passes a combination of discrete ‘factor’ (alleles or genes)
- Each gamete carries only one factor
-Factors segregate independently during gamete formation
- Dominant and recessive factors
Was Gregor Mendel’s work known by Wallace and Darwin?
Yes
What is Evolutionary Fitness?
individual’s ability to survive and reproduce
What is Relative Fitness?
individual’s ability to survive and reproduce relative to the rest of the population
What is Selection Pressure:
environmental factor that causes one phenotype to be better than another (abiotic or biotic)
Name the types of Selections.
- Stabilizing selection
- Directional selection
- Diversifying selection
- Frequency-dependent selection
- Negative free-dependent selection
- Sexual selection
- Artificial selection
In Stabilizing selection, Phenotype higher AND lower than the mean has __________.
low fitness