The Origins of Life and Evolution of Populations

These flashcards cover key vocabulary related to the origins of life and concepts of evolution, based on the lecture notes provided.

Prokaryotes

Simple, single-celled organisms that lack a nucleus, such as bacteria.

Stromatolites

Fossilized remains of microbial mats consisting of layers of bacteria and sediment.

Photosynthesis

The process by which green plants and some other organisms use sunlight to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water.

Panspermia

The hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids, and potentially by spacecraft in the form of unintended contamination by microorganisms.

Artificial Selection

The process by which humans breed plants and animals for particular genetic traits.

Genetic Drift

A mechanism of evolution that refers to random changes in the frequency of alleles in a population due to chance events.

Homologous Structures

Anatomical structures that are similar in different species because they have inherited them from a common ancestor.

Vestigial Structures

Remnants of organs or structures that had a function in an early ancestor but are no longer utilized in the same way.

Natural Selection

The process where organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.

Microevolution

Small-scale evolutionary changes that occur within a species over time.

Adaptation

A trait that improves an individual's fitness in a specific environment.

Fitness

The ability of an organism to survive and reproduce in its environment.

Directional Selection

A type of natural selection that favors one extreme phenotype over the mean or other extreme phenotype.

Disruptive Selection

A type of natural selection that favors individuals at both extremes of the phenotypic range.

Stabilizing Selection

A type of natural selection that favors intermediate variants by acting against extreme phenotypes.