Forces of Evolutionary Change

Flashcards related to the concepts and vocabulary of evolutionary change and natural selection.

Natural Selection

The process by which individuals with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce.

Vestigial Structures

Remnants of organs or structures that had a function in early ancestors but are no longer needed.

Comparative Morphology

The study of similarities and differences in the body plans of different organisms.

Directional Selection

A mode of natural selection where one extreme phenotype is favored over others.

Disruptive Selection

A natural selection process that favors two or more extreme phenotypes over the intermediate phenotype.

Stabilizing Selection

A type of natural selection that favors the intermediate variant of a trait.

Heterozygous Advantage

A situation where heterozygous individuals have a higher fitness than homozygous individuals.

Founder Effect

Genetic drift that occurs when a few individuals become isolated from a larger population.

Bottleneck Effect

A sharp reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events or human activities.

Homologous Structures

Anatomical features in different species that share a common ancestry.

Fitness

The ability of an individual to survive and reproduce in a given environment.

Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium

A principle stating that allele frequencies in a population will remain constant in the absence of evolutionary influences.

Relative Dating

A method of determining the age of fossils by comparing their placement in layers of rock.

Absolute Dating

A method of determining the age of a fossil in years through radiometric techniques.

Molecular Clock

A method used to estimate the time of divergence between two species based on mutation rates.

Biogeography

The study of the distribution of species and ecosystems across geographic spaces and through geological time.