Evolutionary Biology Final Review - Exams 1-3

Modern methods show that genetic variation in natural population is typically____ then was traditionally believed.

Higher

As a society shifts from monogamy to promiscuity, what do we expect to happen to HIV virulence over time?

Virulence will increase

Which property of pseudogenes best supports Darwinian evolution?

Older pseudogenes are found in a wider variety of organisms than younger ones

Some people appear to be genetically resistant to HIV, what makes them resistant to HIV?

They have a genetic mutation that inhibits HIV from fusion with their T cells

Which provides the best evidence for the relatedness of life forms?

Correspondence among multiple independent data sets

In 2011 you catch 20 males of a lizard species, measure their tails and find 12 with 2” tails, 5 with 2.5” tails and 3 with 3” tails. In 2014 you return and repeat the procedure and find 10 with 2” tails, 8 with 2.5” tails and 2 with 3” tails. Which of these evolutionary tenants have you confirmed?

There is variation among individuals in a population

During a drought in the Galapagos, small, easily eaten seeds become less abundant leaving only large, hard-cased seeds only birds with large beaks can eat. If this drought persists for several years, then what would be expected from natural selection?

More birds with small beaks dying than large-beaked birds giving way to offspring produced in subsequent generations having a higher percentage of large beaked birds

Homology is the result of…

A character shared because of common ancestry

Which among the four trees decipts the same pattern of evolutionary relationship?

2 and 4

Which of the following is the correct definition of inversion?

A segment of DNA is flipped and reannealed in the opposite direction

The figure shows reaction norms for the amount of pathogens present on 3 insect genotypes across different temperatures. Which type of variation is present?

Gene by environment interaction

What region of the world has experienced the number

Sub-Saharan Africa

What region of the world showed the highest increase in new HIV infections between 2010 and 2015?

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Viral load is generally ___ in the chronic phase of an HIV infection compared to other stages.

Lower

The proofreading ability of reverse transcriptase is generally ___ compared to DNA polymerase.

Worse

The failure of AZT as a treatment illustrates the importance of what evolutionary processes in medicine?

Natural Selection and Mutation

In Dr. Schmidt case, how was the court able to prove that Schmidt infected Nurse Trahan?

Constructing a phylogeny of HIV strains in the area

The Delta-32 mutation prevents or reduces HIV infections by ___.

Rendering the CCR5 coreceptor non-functional

The global distribution of the Delta-32 mutation suggests that

The current distribution is unlikely to be related to HIV

Darwin read and was influenced by the work of ____ during his voyage on the Beagle.

Lyell

Selective Breeding provides counterevidence to what principle of Special Creation?

Species were immutable

Archaeopteryx and Tiktaalik provide key examples of:

Transitional Forms

Almost all organisms use the same ___, providing strong evidence for a common Ancestry of all life on earth.

Codons to describe the same amino acids

In the example of beach mice, what was different about its environment that caused it to diverge from the old field mouse?

The beach has lighter coloration, which led to selection for a lighter coat color for camouflage

Why does the fact the Daphne Major is far from other islands make it a good place to study natural selection in finches?

It limits gene flow

The statement that “Natural selection acts on phenotypes, but evolution changes allele frequencies” assumes that:

The trait is heritable

Natural Selection always favors increased complexity

False

The binomial nomenclature system was first proposed by

Linneaus

When estimating relatedness for a phylogenetic tree, which of the following is the most useful?

Synapomorphy

Homoplasy is typically a result of

Convergent evolution

Which of the following is NOT an advantage of molecular data when compared to morphological data for building phylogenetic trees?

Can look at long extinct species

Which of the following is NOT one of the three principles of cladistics?

True clades always maximize parsimony

Outgroups are commonly used in cladistics to:

Represent the ancestral state

A group containing a common ancestor and all of its descendants is ____.

Monophyletic

Maximum Likelihood analysis calculates

The probability of the data given the tree

Which of the following is the correct equation that underlies the posterior probability in a BMCMC?

P(Tree|Data)=(P(Data|Tree)P(Data))/P(Tree)

Molecular clocks assume that molecular change happens at a ____ rate.

Consistent

You are shown a graph that shows that a trait changes with environment for a particular trait. Furthermore, all genotypes have the same slope of change relative to the environment. You thus conclude that:

Phenotypic plasticity is occurring

Polyploidy is by far the most common in what group of organisms?

Plants

Which of the following is NOT a reason with mutation rates are variable?

Coding regions have more mutations than noncoding regions

What is Muller’s ratchet?

An explanation for sexual reproduction that argues sex is beneficial because it reintroduces no-deleterious-mutation genotypes that have been lost due to drift

Which of following would provide evidence of inbreeding depression?

All of the above

________, the most common type of nonrandom mating, will not change allelic frequencies, but it will change genotypic frequencies toward increasing________

Inbreeding; Homozygosity

Generally you are taught that synonymous (silent) mutations do not affect fitness, thus are not acted upon by natural selection; however this is not always the case, an example illustrating this concept is…

Codon Bias

A dominant allele with an absolute fitness of 0 will…

Be lethal

In Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium the equation p+q=1 refers to the ________, while p^2+2pq+q^2=1 refers to ________________

Allele Frequencies; Genotype Frequencies

Which of the following is NOT an assumption of HWE?

No sexual reproduction

Cavender and Clegg’s study of alcohol dehydrogenase in fruit flies provides evidence for what violation of HWE?

Selection

In the case of overdominance where fitness of the two homozygotes is equal, mean fitness will generally be highest when the frequency of p is:

Roughly .5

Which of the following is NOT a reason why apparently deleterious alleles might be maintained in a population?

Purifying Selection

HWE assumes an infinite population size to minimize the impacts of

Genetic Drift

In banded water snakes in Lake Erie, what would happen if migration from the mainland drastically?

The allele frequency on the island would become more similar to the mainland

Which of the following is not a typical outcome of high genetic drift?

Increasing similarity between populations

Effective population size is always ____ as total population size.

Smaller

____argues that most genetic variation lack adaptive significance.

Neutral Theory

What is one way in which non-random mating is different from other deviations from HWE?

It is not guaranteed to change allele frequencies

Linkage disequilibrium is typically higher when the genes in question are located___.

Close together on the same chromosome

Which of the following is not a source of linkage disequilibrium?

Panmixia

Why is QTL mapping useful?

We often don’t know the loci of quantitative traits

Which of the following is NOT a common interaction pattern in quantitative traits?

Homoeostatic

If a neutral marker appears significantly more often than chance with a phenotype, it implies that:

A QTL might be linked to the neutral marker

What is typically minimized to assess heritability?

Envrionmental variation

What did the experiment on tephritid flies conclude was the adaptive significance of banded wings?

Avoiding jumping spider predation

The comparative method is an attempt to control for:

Common ancestry

Color changing Fuchsia flowers provides an example of:

Physiological Contraint

Why do purple throated carib females have more curved beaks than males?

Females are excluded from a primary food source by males

Female maximum fecundity is typically ______ while in males fecundity is typically _______

Fixed; increasing linearly with number of mates

Investment in reproduction is typically ______ in females compared to males

Higher

Males competing for access to females is an example of ___.

Intrasexual selection

In male marine iguanas, natural and sexual selection for size are:

Natural Selection favors smaller size; sexual selection favors increased size

When is sperm competition likely to be the most prevalent?

When many males mate in close succession

What is the observed allele frequency for the “R” allele?

0.43

How many white flowers would you expect if the population were in HWE?

51

What is the value of the chi-squared statistic in this case?

3.0

You want to raise lizards that are slow enough that pet owners do not keep losing them when they escape from a cage. You know that lizard running speed is genetically determined such that the heritability of running speed is 0.64. The average running speed for your populations is 28 inches per second. If you only allow those lizards to breed that run on average at 17 inches per second, then what do you predict will be the running speed of lizards in the next generation?

21 inches per second

In a population there is a locus with two alleles A and a. If the relative fitness for a is .2 and the mutation rate from A to a is .00001 with no back mutation, what is the expected equilibrium frequency of the a allele?

.0035

The graph shows that when an allele frequency is high then…

Most of the common alleles are present as homozygotes

What type of selection is depicted by the graphs below?

Disruptive Selection

Which of the following was proposed by Hamilton as a possible evolutionary mechanism for spite?

Negative relationship to actor

Which of the following equations correctly represents Hamilton’s Rule?

Br-C>0

Kin selection is most likely to occur when the actors are:

Full siblings

Weaning conflict being when:

The cost of milk production outweighs the benefit to the parent

Why do White-fronted bee eater sons sometimes stay with their parents and help raise siblings?

All of the above

Which of the following is NOT a condition that would increase the likelihood of reciprocal altruism evolving?

Asymmetrical interactions

What is one major disadvantage of adding to telomere length?

It is highly costly energetically

Why do we age (senesce)?

A deleterious mutation that acts later in life can be selected for, if it adds to reproductive output early in life.

What does Hamilton’s Rule state?

Altruism may evolve when the benefits to the recipient are large, the coefficient of relatedness is high, and the cost to the actor is small

What is the apparent evolutionary contradiction of senescence?

Aging reduces fertility and survival and should be selected against

The Green beard effect …?

Requires that individuals have a 'green beard', recognize a 'green beard' on others, and know how they are related to each other.

What is the difference between reciprocity and mutualism?

The major difference is in a time lag associated with reciprocity

If one views an “altruistic” act in nature, one should immediately begin looking for:

all of the above

Considering the evolutionary theory of aging… If a mutation occurs that results in a shorter life for an organism, one would expect that this mutation would be:

selected for if lifetime reproductive success can be increased

Naked mole rats live in tunnels in tropical grasslands of east Africa. Naked mole rats are the only species of mammal that exhibit eusociality. This unique lifestyle likely originated owing to which characteristics of their natural history?

All answers are correct

How can a trait like siblicide evolve and be an optimal strategy?

If resources are always rare, then siblicide is favored over losing all offspring

Which of the following best describe Lack’s Hypothesis concerning clutch size in birds?

Selection will favor clutch sizes that produce the most surviving offspring

Indirect fitness is an important part of overall (inclusive) fitness. Indirect fitness refers to:

reproduction of relatives made possible by an individual’s actions

The oldest tools in the record occur

Before the first evidence for Homo

Green et al found evidence for significant introgression between modern humans and what other hominids

Denisovans and Homo Neanderthalensis

What is the significance of Sahelanthropus tchadensis?

It is the earliest record of the human family

Studies of independent genes suggested that the closest living relative to humans is in which genus?

Pan