Evolution and population biology

The central point that Darwin & Wallace gleaned from Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population was that:
a. heritable traits can be passed from one generation to the next
b. variations exist in all populations
c. individuals in populations will experience differential survival and reproduction
d. there are more offspring produced than the environment can support

there are more offspring produced than the environment can support

Charles Darwin's original career goal was to be:
Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.
Answer choicesa member of the clergya naturalista physiciana member of the British navy

a physician

The discovery that fossils could be used to accurately predict the location of rock units was made by:
Georges Cuvier, French anatomistJames Hutton, chemist and amateur geologistMary Anning, fossil collectorWilliam Smith, British surveyor

William Smith, British surveyor

The term that is used to mean rock layers is:
Please choose the correct answer from the following choices, and then select the submit answer button.
Answer choices
taxa
strata
stratigraphy
stratosphere

strata

Despite the obvious external differences, all mammalian forelimbs share the same basic bone pattern. This is an example of:
analogy
genetic drift
homology
convergent evolution

homology

The "Great Chain of Being," as originally developed, was adapted by many scholars in the 1600s-1700s and came to be known as:
paleontology
comparative anatomy
natural theology
creationism

natural theology

"The process where organisms that are better adapted to their environment differentially survive and produce" is a definition for:
artificial selection
analogy
natural selection
homology

natural selection

There were many who resisted the suggestion that many living things had gone extinct because:
a. if natural selection works, then extinction is impossible
b. natural selection leads to perfection
c. gaps would have necessarily been left in the Great Chain of Being
d. the age of Earth does not allow for extinction events

gaps would have necessarily been left in the Great Chain of Being

Which of the following is NOT a central tenet in Darwin/Wallace's theory of natural selection?
a. Variations in populations emerge through mutations.
b. There are more offspring produced in any generation than the environment can support.
c. Variations among individuals in a population are heritable.
d. Variations exist in all populations.

Variations in populations emerge through mutations.

Suppose you knew an individual who experienced an unfortunate accident and lost a limb. According to strict Lamarckian thinking:
a. such events have no effect on offspring
b. that individual's offspring would be lacking the same limb
c. the loss of a limb creates mutations in genes, which are passed to the next generation
d. changes in features are only passed from one generation to the next through the DNA code

that individual's offspring would be lacking the same limb

To creationists who insist that all living things are acts of special creation, the discovery and acceptance of extinction events would also have been unpalatable because:
a. natural selection does not favor extinction events
b. Earth is old enough to support extinction events
c. there's plenty of scientific evidence supporting extinction events
d. extinctions would imply that the creator made many "mistakes"

extinctions would imply that the creator made many "mistakes"

As your text points out in reference to natural selection, Darwin took note that "grouse have feathers that closely match the brown color of the heath where they live." However, Darwin also wrote in a letter to a colleague in 1860, "The sight of a feather in a peacock's tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!" What must have Darwin been referring to in this letter?
a. Because peacock tails are large and conspicuous and energetically expensive to grow, peacocks must not be affected by natural selection.
b. Because peacock tails are large and conspicuous and energetically expensive to grow, peacocks must have been produced through artificial selection.
c. Because peacock tails are large and conspicuous and energetically expensive to grow, the tail display of peacocks is not predicted, based upon evolution by natural selection.
d. Because peacock tails are large and conspicuous and energetically expensive to grow, they must be the product of natural selection.

Because peacock tails are large and conspicuous and energetically expensive to grow, the tail display of peacocks is not predicted, based upon evolution by natural selection.

"The present is the key to the past" has been proposed as a slogan which summarizes:
genetic drift
extinction
natural selection
uniformitarianism

uniformitarianism

While his theory of evolution by natural selection applies to living things, Darwin was also a knowledgeable:
mathematician
astronomer
physicist
geologist

geologist

Given that genetic drift can be defined as "Evolution arising from random changes in the genetic composition of a population from one generation to the next," what could be predicted about the range of impact on populations?

Genetic drift will play a bigger role in smaller populations.

One paleontologist who specializes in extinction events has claimed that 99.9% of the species that were once alive on Earth are now extinct. Given the tremendous biodiversity on Earth now, the MOST logical explanation for this is:

that new living forms have evolved from surviving lineages to take the place of those that went extinct

One could argue that humans have an innate or natural ability to classify things. On a fundamental level, such an ability would have probably sprung from:

our need to separate dangerous from non-dangerous components in our natural environment

The MOST important modifier in the definition of hypothesis is:

tentative

Change in populations through generations:

will likely involve both random and systematic processes