Biology 3201 Evolution Practice Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key terms, scientists, theories, and mechanisms of evolution from the Biology 3201 Unit 4 outcomes.

Evolution

The process of change in living organisms over time.

Adaptation

A characteristic or trait that helps an organism survive in its environment.

Variation

The differences that exist between individuals of the same species.

Industrial Melanism

The evolutionary process, exemplified by the Peppered Moth story, where industrial pollution leads to the dominance of darker-colored varieties of a species.

Charles Lyell

A scientist who contributed to evolutionary thought through his geological studies of Earth's history and change.

Thomas Malthus

An economist whose ideas on population growth and resource competition influenced Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Alfred Wallace

A naturalist who independently developed a theory of evolution by natural selection similar to Darwin's.

Charles Darwin

The scientist who proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection based on observations of biodiversity.

Jean Baptiste Lamarck

A biologist who proposed an early theory of evolution involving the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Georges Cuvier

A scientist who contributed to the study of evolution and biology, specifically known for his work in paleontology.

Natural Selection

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

Artificial Selection

The intentional breeding of plants or animals by humans to produce desirable traits.

Homologous structures

Anatomical features in different species that share a common evolutionary origin, used as evidence for the modern theory of evolution.

Analogous structures

Structures in different species that perform similar functions but do not share a common evolutionary origin.

Vestigial structures

Anatomical features that no longer seem to have a purpose in the current form of an organism but were functional in its ancestors.

Relative dating

A method of determining the age of fossils by comparing their position in rock sediments to the age of other fossils and layers.

Absolute dating

A method of determining the specific age of a fossil or rock through calculations involving radioactive decay and half-life.

Half-life of Carbon-14

The time it takes for half of the original carbon-14 in a sample to decay, which is approximately $5730$ years.

Population genetics

The study of genetic variation within populations and how these variations change over time.

Gene pool

The total collection of all the genes and their different alleles in a specific population.

Allele frequency

The proportion of a specific allele relative to all other alleles of that gene in a population.

Hardy-Weinberg law

A principle stating that allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation to generation in the absence of evolutionary influences.

Genetic drift

A change in the gene pool of a population due to chance events, including the bottleneck effect and the founder effect.

Gene flow

The transfer of genetic material from one population to another, often occurring through migration.

Non-random mating

Mating patterns where individuals choose mates based on specific traits, including inbreeding and assortative mating.

Speciation

The formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.

Transformation

One pathway of speciation where a new species gradually develops as an entire population changes over time.

Divergence

One pathway of speciation where two or more species evolve from a common ancestral species.

Pre-zygotic barriers

Biological barriers that prevent mating or fertilization between species, such as behavioural, habitat, temporal, mechanical, or gametic isolation.

Post-zygotic barriers

Barriers that occur after fertilization to prevent the development of fertile offspring, including hybrid inviability, hybrid sterility, and hybrid breakdown.

Adaptive radiation

A mechanism for speciation where a single ancestral species evolves into a variety of forms that live in different ways.

Convergent evolution

The independent evolution of similar features in species of different lineages.

Divergent evolution

The process by which interbreeding species diverge into two or more evolutionary groups.

Coevolution

The process where two species evolve in response to changes in each other over time.

Gradualism

The view that evolution proceeds by the accumulation of gradual changes over long periods of time.

Punctuated equilibrium

The theory put forth by Gould and Eldridge stating that evolution occurs in rapid bursts of speciation followed by long periods of little change.

Oparin-Haldane theory

A theory of chemical evolution proposing that life began in the oceans from a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules.

Miller-Urey theory

An experimental simulation of early Earth's atmosphere that demonstrated how organic compounds could be formed through chemical evolution.

Symbiogenesis

The theory that eukaryotic cells evolved from the symbiotic relationship between different types of simple prokaryotic organisms.

Panspermia theory

The hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe and was distributed to Earth by space dust, meteoroids, or asteroids.

GAIA theory

The theory that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings evolve as a single, self-regulating system to maintain the conditions for life.

Intelligent design theory

A theory pertaining to the origin of living organisms suggesting that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause.