Chapter 18: Introduction to Darwinian Evolution

David Reznick

________ and John Endler have studied the effects of predation intensity on the evolution of guppy populations in the laboratory and in nature.

Continental drift

________, which caused the various landmasses to break apart and separate, has played a major role in evolution.

Mutation

________ provides the genetic variability that natural selection acts on during evolution.

Radioisotopes

________ present in a rock provide a way to accurately measure the rocks age.

Homoplastic features

________ demonstrate convergent evolution, in which organisms with separate ancestries adapt in similar ways to comparable environmental demands.

Evolution

________ is the accumulation of inherited changes within a population over time.

Natural selection

________ results in adaptations, evolutionary modifications that improve the chances of survival and reproductive success in a particular environment.

Index fossils

________ characterize a specific layer over large geographic areas.

Evolutionary affinities

________ exist among the organisms that have homologous features.

Darwin

________ tried to explain the similarities between animals and plants of the arid Galápagos Islands and the humid South American mainland.

Jean Baptiste de Lamarck

________ was the first scientist to propose that organisms undergo change over time as a result of some natural phenomenon rather than divine intervention.

Evolutionary changes

________ are often the result of mutations in genes that affect the orderly sequence of events during development.

Homologous features

________ have basic structural similarities even though the structures may be used in different ways because ________ derive from the same structure in a common ancestor.

Lamarck

________ thought that organisms were endowed with a vital force that drove them to change toward greater complexity over time.

modern synthesis

The ________ combines Darwins evolutionary theory by natural selection with modern genetics to explain why individuals in a population vary and how species adapt to their environment.

separate evolutionary pathways

The accumulation of genetic changes since organisms diverged, or took ________, has modified the pattern of development in more complex vertebrate embryos.

Charles Darwin

________ and Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed evolution by natural selection, which is based on four observations.

Development

________ in different animals is controlled by the same kinds of genes, which indicates that these animals have a shared evolutionary history.

Darwin

________ was influenced by artificial selection, in which breeders develop many varieties of domesticated plants and animals in just a few generations.

Evolution

________ is the unifying concept of biology because it links all fields of the life sciences into a coherent body of knowledge.

Homoplastic features

________ evolved independently to have similar functions in distantly related organisms.

Darwin

________ applied Thomas Malthus's ideas on the natural increase in human populations to natural populations.

Darwin

________ was influenced by the idea that Earth was extremely old, an idea promoted by Charles Lyell and other geologists.