Evolution Exam 1 FAU

TRUE or FALSE: human beings as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals

True

What are 2 commonalities of all life

-all life possesses RNA/DNA

-all life evolved

Evolution= Descent with modification. What does this mean?

Change in the properties of populations of organisms, or groups of such populations, over the course of generations

Evolutionary biology has applications in what 6 things?

-health sciences

-agriculture

-natural products

-conservation and environment management

-understanding ourselves

-Entertainment

What are vestigial structures?

A useless rudimentary version of a body part that has an important function in other, closely allied, species

What did Darwin argue about vestigial structures?

Argues that vestigial traits are difficult to explain under the theory of creation, but readily interpretable under the theory of descent with modification

What are some examples of vestigial structures that were talked about in lecture?

-human's tiny tailbone (coccyx)

-our arrector pilli muscles on our hair follicles (goosebumps)

What is Special Creation?

-species do not change

-lineage do not split

-each species is separately created

- each species in independently created

-earth and life are young

What is descent with modification?

-species change over time (microevolution)

-lineages split and diverge (speciation)

-new life forms derive from older life-forms (macroevolution)

-all life forms are related (common ancestry)

-earth and life are old

What is microevolution?

Species are not immutable, but change through time

Ex. In a population of birds, the average beak sizes may change from one generation to the next

What are some examples of microevolution?

-Selective breeding/ artificial selection: humans selectively breed wolves to create dogs and many different kinds of dogs

-direct observation

-vestigial structures: coccyx, goosebumps

What is speciation?

Lineages split and diverge, thereby increasing the number of species

ex. An ancestral species of birds, for instance, may give rise to two distinct descendant species

What is a species?

Populations, or groups of populations, within and among which individuals actually or potentially interbreed and outside of which the do not interbreed

What are some examples of speciation

-Natural populations

-lab experiments: a study by Dianne Dodd on the fruit fly on the mating preferences of fruit flies from populations adapted to different diets. (Same wanted to mate with same 90% of the time)

What is the speciation process discussed in lecture?

-starts with a single population in which there is variation among individuals

-second stage involves a population divided into readily distinguishable sub populations that are nonetheless still interbreed

-third stage of speciation features distinct populations with limited interbreeding

-finally reproductively isolated populations = species

What is macroevolution?

Over long periods of time, novel forms of life can be derived from earlier forms

EX. Tetrapods arose from a lineage of fish

What is a fossil?

Any trace of a organism that lived in the past

What is the fossil record?

The chronicle of evolution over millions of years of geologic time engraved in the order in which fossils appear in rock strata.

What is evidence for macroevolution?

-Extinction and succession

-transitional forms

-fossils

What is the law of succession?

the general pattern of correspondence between fossil and living forms from the same local come to be known as this

Ex. Marsupial radiation: the Pygmy armadillo is similar to fossil glyptodonts. Wombats in Australia resemble the distinct marsupial diprotodon

What is a transitional form? And what was the example talked about in class?

Fossils or organisms that show the intermediate states between an ancestral form and that of its descendants

the most famous transitional for is the archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx was not in the direct line descent from dinosaurs to modern birds but showed a combination of traits from both showing that it had a common ancestor with both. Archaeopteryx shows that birds are derived from dinosaurs

What is common ancestry?

all life forms are related

What is homology?

- an example of common ancestry

similarity due to shared ancestry

What is structural homology

The study of similar structures in different species

Species have similar features because

The evolved from a common ancestry

Natural selection was who's theory of evolution?

Charles Darwin

What is the mechanism that results in adaptation?

Natural selection

Why are species different

Species are different because unique traits are favored in contrasting environments

What were Darwin's 4 claims regarding natural selection?

1. The individuals within a population differ from one another

2. The differences are passed from parent to offspring

3. some individuals are more successful surviving and reproducing than others

4. The successful individuals are not merely lucky; instead they succeed because of the variant traits they have inherited and will pass to their offspring

What is Darwinian fitness

An individual's ability to survive and reproduce

Natural selection acts on individuals , but its consequences occur in populations. What was the the example of this given in both class and the textbook?

The effort of cracking tribulus seeds did not make the beaks of individual finches grow larger. Nor did the birds' need for more food, or their desire for bigger beaks make their beaks grow. Instead, the average beak depth in the finch population increased due to the simple, if cruel, fact that more small-beaked finches died

Natural selection acts on phenotypes, but evolution consists of changes in allele frequencies. What does this mean??

Selection would have altered the frequencies of the phenotypes in the population, but in the next generation the phenotype distribution might have gone back to what it was before selection occurred

- only when survivors of selection pass their successful phenotypes to their offspring, via genotypes that help determine phenotypes, does natural selection cause populations to change from one generation to the next

Natural selection is not forward looking. What does this mean??

Offspring are descended from the survivors of selection imposed by the conditions that prevailed before the offspring were born

TRUE or FALSE: natural selection is all knowing and can see the future

FALSE

because it is not , evolving populations always lag behind Atleast a generation with changes in the environment

natural selection acts on existing traits , but new traits can evolve. What does this mean??

- selection itself generates no new genetic variation adaptive or otherwise

- differences in survival or reproduction occur only among variants that already exist

-persistent natural selection can lead to the evolution of new functions for existing behaviors, structures, and genes.

Ex: carnivorous plants

What is exaptation?

A trait that is used in a novel way

-represents happenstance and enhances an individual's fitness fortuitously

What are secondary adaptations

Additional modifications that arise during adaptation

natural selection does not lead to perfection. What was the example given in class and in the textbook?

One reason is that populations may face contradictory patterns of selection

-example: consider the male mosquito fish, whose anal fin in modified to serve as a copulatory organ. Females of this species prefer males that have a bigger anal fin. But when predators attack, a big anal fin is literally a drag, slowing the males escape

natural selection is non-random, but not progressive. What does this mean

-mutation and recombination are random but natural selection is not, it is non-random

-natural selection is by definition the nonrandom superiority at survival and reproduction of some variants over others

-evolving populations improve only in that their average adaptation to the environment increases. There is not inexorable trend towards more advanced life forms

Fitness is not circular. What does this mean?

-as long as a nonrandom subject of the population survives at higher rates and leaves more offspring, evolution will result

TRUE or FALSE: selection acts for the good if the species

FALSE

acts on the individual not for the whole species

How can Darwinian fitness be measured?

By counting the offspring that individuals produce or by observing their ability to survive a selection event, and comparing each individual's performance to that of others in the population

What are the 4 tenants of natural selection

1. The ability of a population to expand is infinite, while the resources available to sustain said population are finite

2. the dynamic causes a struggle for existence among individuals as they compete for resources

3. organisms vary in their physical qualities; these variations allow for some members to reproduce more successfully than others

4. these variations are inherited by the offspring from their parents

What are the 4 steps of natural selection?

1. Populations with varied inherited traits

2. eliminating individuals with certain traits

3. reproduction of survivors

4. increasing frequency of traits that enhance survival and reproductive success

Who is Anaximander?

-6th century BC

- claimed life had originally evolved from the sea and later moved to land

wrote that "men first formed as fish and eventually cast off their fish skins and took up life on dry land

Who is Empedocles?

-5th century BC

-father of the evolutionary idea

- wrote the non supernatural origin for living things

- came up with a form of natural selection: "plants and animals arose from the earth; they arose with unattached organs and parts that join together in a haphazard fashion"

Who is Aristotle?

-4th century BC

-myths, works were scattered

-You can go from the simplest life form to the most complex

St Thomas Aquinas SUMMA THEOLOGICA:

Whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.

SCALA NANRAE-GREAT CHAIN OF BEING

-proposed by Connor Gessner in mid 15th hundreds

-he said "all organisms could be classified in this great ladder of life"

-devil< rocks< plants

-It was sinful to try to aspire to be in a different stage than what you were or to lower yourself.

-snakes were below beetles & other insects from the garden of eve

Who is Liebenz (1646-171)

-said there were gaps In the great chain because species went extinct and other transformed

-were unrolling into a perfect universe rather than already existing as one

who is Linnaeus (1707-1778)

-classifications of organisms

↳ he described them in great detail

-he said nature does not make leaps

↳ every link in the chain you have to be able to fit in there

Who is Buffon (1707-1788)

-codified the notion that species are really the only biological units that have a

natural existence

He wrote: he wrote :

Not only the ass and the horse, but also man, the apes, the quadruped, and all the animals, might be regarded as constituting but a single family...If it were admitted that the ass is of the family of the horse, and differs from the horse only because it has varied from the original form, one could equally well say that the ape is of the family of man, that he is degenerate man, that man and ape have a common origin; that, in fact, all the families, among plants as well as animals, have come from a single stock, and that all animal are descended from a single animal, from which have sprung in the course of time, as a result of progress or of degeneration, all the other races of animals.

TRUE or FALSE: the church loved buffon's theory

FALSE!

but from this he had to reject his own idea because the Church had a high influence during this time which said that God was the creator and what he said was wrong.

Who were the two transmutationists talked about in lecture ?

James burrett

erasmus Darwin

What is transmutationalism?

transforming from one to another"

Who is James Burnett (1714-1799)

- man descended from primates

-but In response to the environment organisms have found ways of transforming their characters over longtime

-as the environment changed the organism changed

Who is Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)

-wrote zoonomia (179)

-he was Charles Darwin's grandfather

-he suggested that all warm bodied animals have arisen from One single living filament : everything arose from a common ancestor

Linnaeus developed what system for categorizing species

Binomial nomenclature

- recognized species as the fundamental unit defined by reproduction (species)

Who were Darwin's influenced in geology?

HUTTON AND LYELL

-current geological and processes that we observe today are responsible

for all geologic features

-> gradual geologic processes operating continuously over a long time

What is gradualism?

profound change is the cumulative product of slow , continous

change

What is uniformitarianism?

geological processes havent changed over the course

of history.

Who influenced Darwin in economics?

Malthus

What did Malthus do?

-· essay on the principle of population

-the rate of population growth exceeds the rate of resource growth

Therefore people have to fight to survive

Who influenced Darwin on paleontology?

Cuvier

Cuvier's of fossils revealed:

-stratification: fossils were deposited in layers of different ages

-change through time: older fossils were less similar to modern forms , ex. through time

forms changed

- extinction:locations where fossils from older Strata were lost , ex. Species went extinct

-Catastrophism- major changes In Strata are the result of catastrophic events, ex. floods or droughts

Who was Darwin's influence on evolution?

-Lamarck

-Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913)

What did Lemarck believe about evolution?

-he believed that simple life forms continuously cam e Into existence from dead

matter & continuously became more complex

-organisms driven to greater complexity

-change through use and disuse

What did Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913)

do

Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913)

-Darwin's contemporary

- came to the same conclusion as Darwin

-They presented their work together in 18-collector

-naturalist

-surveyer

-co-published the Origin of Species in 1858

What is Wallace's Line?

dramatic differences In the type of life from Asian flora

and fauna to Australian Mora & found

Who is Charles Darwin's grandfather

Erasmus darwin

Who is Charles Darwin's father

Robert Darwin

-high society doctor

-a financier

When was Charles Darwin born?

February 12, 1809

What was Darwin's education in order

-went to Shrewsbury - > Public School

-from there he left the school at 16 to go to Edinburgh to stray medicine because his

lineage (father & grandpa) were doctor's

- despised formal education , neglected his medical studies

-Instead looked at plants and etc.

· a guy named John Edmond stone, a freed black slave taught him taxidermy

↳how-to taxiderm species, this led him to result not studying more anatomy

-Charle's Darwins father sent him to cambridge to get his degree on a step to becoming a minister, an anglican person

↳ shifted from medicine to theology

-> problem was he didnt believe In the bible &the

church

Who is JOHN STEVENS HENSLOW (1790-1861)

-cambridge professor

- theologian

·-naturalist

-a trip on the Beagit , wanted a naturalist to document the plants & animals that they would see so they asked Henslow but he cant rust leave and the trip, therefore proposed Charles Darwin to so on the trip Instead .

-Darwin's dad didn't approve , but said If another person can so that he approves of he would let him so.

↳ Darwin called his Uncle Josian wedgewood, the uncle called his brother and said the expectation which made his clad approve

and allowed Charle's Darwin to go .

Who is CAPTAIN ROBERT FITZROY (1805-1845)

·-young

- metiCUIOUS

-aristocrat

-> was born Into an aristocratic family

- > the captain wanted was someone of his social status to join the voyage so that he wouldn't be alone and become nuts so that was one of

the reasons they wanted a naturalist

- highly focused on the Bible and God

Important stuff we should know about the Beagle

-was expected to take 2-3 years to so around the world but Instead It took 5 years

-Darwin ate with the captain, & didn't eat with the rest of them as they were from separate classes

-started from England, went down to south America , to the Galapagos Islands, over to Australia , to Africa, back to South America and then

back to Europe

What was Darwin's stance on marriage?

marry :

-> constant companion and friend in old age

-> better than a dog anyhow

-> but terrible loss of time

-> less money for books

not marry :

-> freedom to go where one liked

-> conversation of clever men at clubs

-> not forced to visit relatives

Who did Charles Darwin marry?

Emma Westwood

-his first cousin

Who was the uncle that persuaded Darwin's father to allow him to go on the voyage?

Josiah Wedgwood

When was the Origin of Species published?

November 24, 1859

TRUE or FALSE: The origin of species did not sell very well when it was first published

FALSE

sold out on day 1

What is the story of henry bates

· collected In the amazon for 11 years

· sent home 1400 species, 8000 new to science

Batesian mimicry

A type of mimicry in which a harmless species looks like a species that is poisonous or otherwise harmful to predators.

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)

Austrian monk commonly known as the "father of genetics

-genetics work

rediscovered

-Mechanism of inheritance

Who narrates the movie we saw in class?

Liam Neeisen