general zoology exam no. 1 content

What is the meaning of homo sapien?

Wise man

What percentage of genes do humans share with chimpanzees?

98%

What is zoology?

The scientific study of animals

What is a phylogenetic tree?

A diagram depicting the history of animal life with branches that represent evolutionary lineages/historical splittings

What is the major goal of studying animal diversity?

To locate the origins of major characteristics such as multicellularity, a coelom, spiral cleavage, vertebrae, and homeothermy

What are the essential characteristics of science?

It is guided by natural law, it must be explanatory by reference to natural law, its conjectures are testable against the observable world, its conclusions are tentative and therefore not necessarily the final word, and it is falsifiable.

What is the hypothetic-deductive method?

The scientific process of making a conjecture and then seeking empirical tests that potentially lead to its rejection. One begins this process by generating hypotheses, or potential explanantions of a phenomenon of nature

What are hypotheses?

Potential answers to questions being asked that are derived from prior observations of nature or from theories derived on such observations

What are the steps of the scientific method?

Observation, question, hypothesis formation, empirical test (experiment), conclusions, and publication

What is an observation in zoology?

The first ciritcal step in evaluating animal populations

What two major categories are questions regarding animal life placed into?

Experimental versus comparative methods

What is the experimental method?

When hypotheses of proximate causes are tested

What are the steps of the experimental method?

Predicting from a tentative explanation how a system would respond to a treatment, making the treatment, and comparing observed results to predicted ones

What is teleology?

The idea that nature has a predetermined goal

What theory rejected rejected teleology?

The Darwinian evolutionary theory

What does the comparative method do?

It tests hypotheses of ultimate casualities, often relying on results of experimental science

What is compared to identify patterns of variation and evolutionary relatedness of different species?

Molecular biology, cell biology, organismal structure, development, and ecology

What fields illustrate the comparative method?

Comparative biochemistry, molecular evolution, comparative cell biology, comparative anatomy, comparative physiology and behavior, and phylogenetic systematics

Who were the first to establish evolution as a powerful scientific theory?

Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace

What is the pre-darwinian evolutionary idea?

Greek philosophers Xenophanes, Empedocles, and Aristotle recorded evolutionary history and recognized fossils as evidence of former life

What does Lamarckism propose?

An evolutionary mechanism, inheritance of acquired characteristics by making a convincing case that fossils were remains of extinct animals

Why do we reject transformational theories?

Becuase genetic studies show that traits acquired during an organisms lifetime are not transmitted to offspring

Who created Lamarckism?

Jean Baptiste de Lamarck

How are Darwin and Lamarck’s evolutionary theory different?

Darwin’s theory was variational and Lamarck’s theory was transformational

What is evolutionary change based on according to Darwin?

Differences that occur among organisms within a population

What level does evolution occur?

At the level of population, with the frequency of favorable traits increasing over generations

What did Charles Lyell study?

Uniformitarianism

What did Charles Lyell’s studies lead him to conclude?

That the earth’s age must be measured in millions of years

How long was Darwins voyage on the H.M.S beagle?

5 years

What did Darwin discover on his 5 year voyage?

The similarities in climate and topography of the islands, plants and animals resembled those of the South American mainland, and each island often had a unique species that resembled forms on other islands

What did Darwin conclude about the Galapagos?

That they originated in continental South America, colonized islands in rare events of trans-oceanic dispersal, and had undergone modification in various conditions on different islands

What did T.R. Malthus state in his work?

That populations have the reproductive capacity to expand beyond environmental capacity

Who came to the same conclusions as Darwin?

Alfred Russel Wallace

What are the 5 major theories that Ernst Mayr proposed Darwinism should be viewed as?

Perpetual Change, common descent, multiplication of the species, gradualism, and natural selection

What is the perpetual change theory of Darwinism?

The living world is neither constant nor perpetually cycling, but is always changing

What is the common descent theory of Darwinism?

All forms of life propagated from a common ancestor through a branching on lineages

What is the multiplication of species theory of Darwinism?

The evolutionary process produces new species by splitting and transforming older ones

What is the gradualism theory of Darwinism?

Large differences in anatomic traits that characterize disparate species originate through the accumulation of many small incremental changes over very long periods of time

What is the natural selection theory of Darwinism?

A natural process by which populations accumulate favorable characteristics throughout long periods of evolutionary time

Who was Darwin’s foremost advocate?

Thomas Henry Huxley, one of England’s greatest zoologists

Why can natural selection be considered a two-step process?

It involves the production of variation by mutation (random component) and differential persistence of adaptations (nonrandom component)

Who introduced the phrase “survival of the fittest“?

The British social philosopher Herbert Spencer

What is a fossil?

A remnant of past life uncovered from the crust of the earth

What is a benefit of fossil remains that include well preserved soft tissues?

Electron microscopy can reveal recognizable cellular organelles

Where can insects and small vertebrates (ex: lizards) be entombed?

In amber, the fossilized resin of trees

What did a study of a fly entombed in 40 million year old amber reveal?

Structures corresponding to muscle fibers, nuclei, ribosomes, lipid droplets, endoplasmic reticulum, amd mitochondria

Why and how is the fossil record biased?

Vertebrate skeltons and invertebrates with shells provide more records, and soft-bodied animals leave fossils only in exceptional condittiones meaning that preservation is selective.

What form do fossils form in?

Stratified layers, new deposits are on top of older material

What are index/guide fossils?

Indicators of specific geological periods

What is the law of stratigraphy?

Produces sequence of dates with the oldest layers at the bottom

What is radiometric dating?

A method for determining the absolute age of rocks. the radioactive decay of naturally occurring elements is independent of heat and pressure

What do fossil records allow observation of?

Evolutionary change over broad periods of time

How long do animal species typically survive?

1-10 million years

What is ecology?

The study of the relationship of organisms to their environment

What is the hierarchy of ecology?

Organism<population<community<ecosystem

What is an organism?

An individual living thing

What is species richness?

Diversity

What is a population?

When animals in nature coexcist with others of the same species as reproductive units

How do predators obtain energy and nutrients?

By killing and eating prey

How do parasites and parasitoids differ?

Parasitoids are aparasites that kill the host organism, otherwise, parasites do not kill the host

When does competition in a ecosystem occur?

When resources become limited

What allow the study of the ecological community and the physical environment to occur?

Larger units called ecosystems

What is the biosphere?

The land, water, and atmosphere that envelops the planet and suports all life on earth

What are abiotic factors?

Nonliving factors such as space, energy forms including sunlight, hear, wind and water currents, the soil, air, water and chemicals

What are biotic factors?

Living factors sucfh as organisms, competitors, predators, hosts or parasites

What are resources?

Environmental factors that an animal uses directly

What are expendable resources?

Resources that are consumed by being used (ex: food)

What are nonexpendable resources?

Resources that are not consumed by being used (ex: Space)

What is habitat?

Physical space where an animal lives and is defined by the animal’s normal activity

What is a niche?

Everything associated with an organism and its environment

What defines an organisms niche?

Its life requirements

What does a niche include?

The animals limits of temperature, moisture, food, and other factors

What makes a niche multidimensional?

The addition of important factors such as salinity or pH

What are generalists?

Animals with wild niches that can tolerate a wide range of salinity or eat a wide range of foods

What are specialists?

Animals that have narrow dietary requirements or limited tolerance to temperature changes

What is a fundamental niche?

It describes an animal’s potential role to live within a wider range of conditions

What is a realized niche?

The narrower subset of suitable environments that an animal actually experiences

What is a deme?

A geographically and genetically cohesive population that is separable from other such populations yet share a gene pool

What does movement among demes provide?

Some evolutionary cohesion among species

What is metapopulation dynamics?

Interaction among demes

What can unpredicted change in local environments cause?

A local deme to become depleted or eliminated

What is migration?

A source of replacement among demes within a region

What are source demes and what do they supply?

Stable demes that supply emigrants to the less stable demes

What are sink demes and what are they susceptible to?

Less stable demes that are suscptible to extinction

What is demography?

The study of the age structure, sex ratio, and growth rate of a population

What does it mean for organisms to be modular?

It consists of colonies of genetically identical organisms and tWhey reproduce via asexual cloning or fragmentation

What are examples of modular organisms?

Sponges, corals, and bryozoans

What is pathenogenesis?

The development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg of from one in which the male and female nuclei fail to unite following fertilization

What is the Type I survivorship curve?

All individuals die at an old age, occurs rarely in nature

What is the Type II survivorship curve?

When the rate of mortality is a proportion of survivors is constant across ages

What type of survivorship curve do human fall between?

Type I and Type II depending on nutrition and medical care

What is the Type III survivorship curve?

Represents many species that produce huge numbers of yound but experience rapid and sustained mortality

What is semelparity?

The condition in which an organism repoduces only once during its life history

What is iteroparity?

The condition in which an organism reproduces multiple cohorts of offspring

What is a limiting resource?

The resource that will be depleted first

What is the carrying capacity (K)?

The largest population that the limiting resource can support

When does sigmoid growth/density dependence occur?

When population density exerts negative feedback on growth rate

What increased the carring capacity for humans?

Agriculture

What was the human carrying capacity before the Agricultural Revolution 8000 BC?

5 million humans

What are density independent factors of growth?

Abiotic factors that reduce populations (natural disasters) that kill members of a population regardless of its size