BASICS

What is Antigenic Drift?

small, gradual changes in genes caused by the accumulation of mutations over time, virus becomes slightly different from previous strains

What is Antigenic Shift?

a sudden, major change caused by the reassortment of genetic material, virus becomes a completely different strain

What is fossil record?

collection of fossils that provide evidence of existence, characteristics and evolution over time

What is a transitional fossil?

a fossil with a combination of characteristics from an ancestral population and a descendent, providing evidence of evolution between the two species

Characteristics of mammals (4)

hair or fur, mammary gland, 3 middle ear bones, four chambered heart

Characteristics of Hominins (6)

bipedalism, largebrain size, reduced teeth size, rounded skull, tibia-femur angle, flatter face

What is point mutation?

change to a singular nucleotide

What is a frameshift mutation?

insertion or deletion of nucleotides that shift the reading frame

What is a Block Mutation?

large sections of DNA are rearranged, duplicated, deleted or moved

What is Gene flow

movement of alleles between populations due to migration, increasing genetic variation, introducing new alleles and changing frequency

What is genetic drift?

a random change in allele frequency due to chance events that randomly affects which individuals survive

What is Bottleneck effect?

type of genetic drift where a large population is drastically reduced in size by a chance event leaving a small population

What is Founder effect?

type of genetic drift that occurs when a small group of individuals become isolated from a larger population

What is a half life and Carbon dating? (+ limitation)

a half life is the time needed for a substance to reduce to half of its starting value. living organisms contain carbon and when they die it decays at a known rate so the remaining carbon can be measured to estimate time since death. limitation is that it has a relatively short half life so is not useful for very old fossils

What is Allopatric Speciation?

where new species form when ancestral population is divided by a geographical barrier

What is Sympatric Speciation?

where new species form from ancestral population in the same geographical location

What is a homologous structure?

structures with similar anatomy but different functions

What is Analogous structure?

structure that has a similar function but different anatomy