bio exam 1

• Evolution - a change in the genetic composition of a population from one generation to another
• Taxonomy - study of classifying organisms
• Adaptation - aka best traits - an inherited feature that helps an organism’s survival and reproduction in its present environment (ex: platypus’ webbed feet for swimming (trait))
• Darwin’s Book - Origin of Species (1859), 2 main ideas: descent with modification and natural selection
• Descent with modification - Earth’s many species are descendants of ancestral species that were different from present-day species
• Natural Selection - aka survival of the fittest - reproduction of individuals with favorable genetic traits that survive environmental change because of those traits, leading to evolutionary change
• Phylogenetic trees - diagrams used to reflect evolutionary relationships among organisms or group of organisms (branches = species, letters = living, trunk = common ancestor)
• Heritable - can be passed on (inherited)
• Traits - genetically determined characteristics
• Pathogens - microorganisms that cause disease
• Virulence - disease-causing ability of an organism
• Fossil intermediates - present evolutionary transition between 2 groups of organisms
• The binomial system assigns to each organism a unique name that describes its genus and species.
• The geologist who proposed ‘gradualism’ is James Hutton.
• Natural selection acts on the individual, but the fundamental unit of evolution is the population.
• Scientific theory - a broad, well-supported, explanation with rich predictive value/leads to many accurate predictions. It's based on natural phenomena and causes and stands up to experimental tests.
• Evolution MISCONCEPTION: species are always evolving into higher or better beings. The REAL goal is to have better adaptations.
• Evolution MISCONCEPTION: evolution creates new forms of life by dramatic mutations. Mutations are ACTUALLY changes in genetic variation that passed on to generations. DNA mutations change DNA sequences.
• Evolution MISCONCEPTION: an organism can evolve during its lifetime. Evolution ACTUALLY happens from one generation to another.
• Evolution MISCONCEPTION: an organism can influence the evolution of its own structures in response to its environment. You can't grow your own wings. Changes HAVE TO be within genetic composition.
• Evolution MISCONCEPTION: Evolution is a completely random process. Evolution is ACTUALLY a nonrandom process.
• Evolution - the change in organisms throughout Earth's history. A change in the genetic composition of a population from generation to generation.
• Charles Darwin - Descent with Modification
• The theory of evolution by natural selection was independently proposed by which two scientists?

  Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace
• As humans use more antibiotics to kill off bacteria, bacteria that are not resistant to antibiotics die off leaving a population of bacteria that are mostly resistant to antibiotics. This is an example of what?

  Natural Selection
• What is an example of vestigial structures?


  wings on flightless birds, eyes of blind cave salamanders, leaves on some cacti
• What is not an example of a vestigial structure?

  spear-like beak of an insect-eating finch
• Species - a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce a fertile offspring
• What is the strongest piece of evidence to support evolutionary theory according to most scientists?

  DNA/protein sequence evidence
• What type of isolation describes the barrier to gene flow that would happen because insects called cicadas emerge from out of the ground in different years?

  Temporal isolation
• The picture below shows animals with analogous structures, which is due to convergence.

  
• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) - fixed ideal species, ladder of nature (scala naturae)
• Linnaeus - father of taxonomy, orderly and nested classification system, binomial naming, botanist
• Charles Lyell - father of geology, uniformitarianism, rock study of physical formations on Earth, the same geological processes in the past and present, rate of change today = rate of change back then, earth is really old
• James Hutton - gradualism, slow and continuous process, provided geographical and fossil evidence, earth is really old
• Erasmus Darwin - first to propose evolution and common ancestor, wrote ideas that "forms minute" slowly acquired complexity over time
• Lamarck - naturalist, linked evolution to adaptation, extinct species have been replaced by descendants with new features, these adaptations helped them survive in environment ex: giraffe's long necks
• theory of inheritance of "acquired" characteristics through "use and disuse" - if an organism changes to adapt to the environment during its lifetime, the traits are passed to its offspring. FALSE because the acquired traits aren't in the genetics
• Charles Darwin - naturalist, traveled on HMS Beagle to South America
• Woese, Kandler, and Wheelis - 3 domains of life: Bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya