AP Bio Unit 7

Vocabulary flashcards based on the AP Biology Unit 7 lecture notes on Evolution.

Process in which organisms with traits that better enable them to adapt to their environment will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers.

Natural Selection

The selective breeding of domesticated plants and animals to encourage the occurrence of desirable traits.

Artificial Selection

A form of natural selection in which individuals with certain inherited characteristics are more likely than other individuals to obtain mates.

Sexual Selection

The process by which one species splits into two or more species.

Speciation

The evolutionary history of a species or group of related species.

Phylogeny

An inherited characteristic that enhances an organism's survival and reproduction in a specific environment.

Adaptation

Differences in physical characteristics between males and females of the same species.

Sexual Dimorphism

Natural selection in which individuals at one end of the phenotypic range survive or reproduce more successfully than do other individuals.

Directional Selection

Natural selection in which intermediate phenotypes survive or reproduce more successfully than do extreme phenotypes.

Stabilizing Selection

Natural selection in which individuals on both extremes of a phenotypic range survive or reproduce more successfully than do individuals with intermediate phenotypes.

Disruptive Selection

The darkening of an organism in response to pollution.

Adaptive Melanism

The contribution an individual makes to the gene pool of the next generation relative to the contributions of other individuals.

Evolutionary Fitness

The study of how genes and genotypes are distributed in populations and how they change over time.

Population Genetics

The proportion of an allele within a population.

Allele Frequency

All the alleles of all the genes in a population.

Gene Pool

A process in which chance events cause unpredictable fluctuations in allele frequencies from one generation to the next.

Genetic Drift

A process in which a population undergoes a drastic reduction in size.

Population Bottleneck

Genetic drift that occurs when a few individuals become isolated from a larger population and form a new population whose gene pool composition is not reflective of that of the original population.

Founder Effect

The transfer of alleles from one population to another population.

Gene Flow

Traits that share a common underlying structure and a common embryological origin, showing descent with modification from a common ancestor.

Homologous Traits

A feature that has no apparent function in a modern organism, but was inherited from an ancestor from whom that structure had a function.

Vestigial Structure

Features that have a similar function but a different underlying structure; they arise through convergent evolution.

Analogous Features

Homologous features at the molecular level; molecules that by their structure and monomer sequence indicate common ancestry.

Molecular Homologies

Non-functional genes that are variants of functional genes in related species.

Pseudogenes

The study of the geographic distribution of species and populations.

Biogeography