ANT100 Exam #1

Evolutionary Anthropology

the application of modern evolutionary theory to studies of morphology, ecology, and behaviour of human and non-human primates

The research disciplines of anthropology:

Primatology, Paleoanthropology, Human Variation, Medical Anthropology, and Forensic Anthropology

Primatology

the scientific study of non-human primates. Primate anatomy, field studies of wild animals, primate psychology, et cetera. Primatologists seek to conserve primates in vanishing tropical ecosystems (for example, mouse lemurs in Madagascar).

Paleoanthropology

the multidisciplinary study of: biological evolution of humans and primates, advent of and changes in human cultural activities, and evolutionary history of behaviour in humans and primates. They are best known of excavating fossils.

Human Variation

studies the spatial and temporal variations in human features, like the geographical and climatic variations in body size, skin colour, and eye colour. Despite these differences, we are all members of the same species, Homo sapiens.

Medical Anthropology

studies how social, environmental, and biological factors influence health and illness of individuals at the community, regional, national, and global levels. Investigate spatial and temporal variations in human survival, disease, and health disparity.

Forensic Anthropology

focuses on skeletal remains of humans. Forensic anthropologists seek to determine the age, sex, stature. Ancestry, and any trauma or diseases of the deceased, whether pre, peri, or post mortem.

Evolutionary anthropologists conduct their research in three types:

descriptive, casual, and applied.

Descriptive research

involves collecting data about the study subjects or objects. For instance, walking through a forest recently damaged by logging and noticing some primate species were missing.

Casual research

involves looking for one thing that causes another thing to happen or change. If you were to go back to that forest and find a cause-and-effect relationship between ecological factors, such as distribution and density of critical food resources, and the loss of primate species in the logged forest.

Applied research

mostly done by medical and forensic anthropologists. It involves changing a variable to test the outcome. For instance, providing more food for the primates to see whether it has a positive effect on the population.

The scientific method involves collecting _________ data and _________ data.

quantitative and qualitative

Carolus Linnaeus

a Swedish physician and botanist, with a strong interest in classifying plants and animals. He invented the comprehensive classification system for living things, where species are grouped into broader categories called genera (singular genus) based on physical resemblances. Binomial nomenclature: first letter of genus is capitalized like, "Homo" our species is "sapiens". Latin was chosen by scientists because it is a dead language, largely only spoken by scholars.

Georges-Louis Leclerc

a French aristocrat, mathematician, and naturalist. He founded biogeography, finding that despite similar environments, different regions have distinct plants and animals.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

a French decorated soldier and later an academic. He was fascinated by classifying animals like Linnaeus. His major contribution was the idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics: "vital forces" within creatures help them adapt to environment. Acquired traits are developed through use or disuse, passed on to future generations. Modern biologists do not subscribe to this theory.

George Cuvier

a French aristocratic naturalist. His studies helped form the scientific disciplines of comparative anatomy and paleontology. However, he championed the theory of catastrophism and subscribed to fixity of species.

James Hutton

a Scottish naturalist and geologist. He made many contributions to the founding of geology. His ideas would eventually form the components of a school of thought known as uniformitarianism.

Charles Lyell

a Scottish geologist who made numerous contributions to geology, particularly in the fields of stratigraphy and glaciology.

Gregor Mendel

a priest from modern-day Czech Republic who experimented with pea-plants. He did not really know what he was discovering with his experiments, and his work was forgotten until the early 1900s. When it was rediscovered, it turned out he had done very valuable work on genetics.

Charles Darwin

was an English geologist and naturalist. He developed the "Theory of Natural Selection", which is what modern biologists follow. His idea was that there was no fixity of species, but rather evolution. He believed individuals in a species adapt to environments, and long-term adaptation means evolutionary shift in an entire population is a response to environmental change.

Alfred Russel Wallace

wrote Darwin from Malaysia describing certain aspects theory of natural selection that Darwin had been researching for 20 years.

Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection

More organisms are born that can possibly survive, "survival of the fittest" (he didn't say that but you know) . Species evolve through natural selection, which is a process in nature resulting in survival and perpetuation of only those forms of life having certain favourable characteristics that enable them to adapt best to their environment.

The three postulates of Darwinian Evolution are

Struggle for existence: ability of population to expand is infinite, but environment finite
Variation in fitness: organisms vary, some individuals possess traits enabling them to survive and reproduce more successfully than others in same environment
Inheritance of variation: advantageous traits inherited by offspring become more common in succeeding generations. Traits that confer advantages in survival and reproduction retained in population disadvantageous traits appear.

Two kinds of cells that live in every living being

prokaryotic and eukaryotic

prokaryotic cells

(such as bacteria) lack a cell nucleus and are unicellular

eukaryotic cells

(like single-celled organisms such as amoebae, or multi-celled like a potato) have a nucleus and can be unicellular or multicellular.

Chromosomes

the DNA molecules that contain hereditary information.

DNA

deoxyribonucleic acid, a nucleic acid used to stone genetic information that codes for the synthesis of proteins. It has four bases: Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C) and Thymine (T).

Humans typically have _____ pairs of chromosomes inside a diploid cell (i.e. _____ chromosomes).

23, 46.

diploid cell

a cell containing two sets of chromosomes, or one set inherited from each parent

RNA

ribonucleic acid molecules

Transcription

the synthesis of single strand of ribonucleic acid (mRNA: messenger RNA) at unwound section of DNA with one of DNA strands serving as template, results in genetic information encoded in DNA is transferred RNA

Four nucleotides of RNA are:

adenine (A) guanine (G) cytosine (C), and uracil (U), which replaces thymine (T) in DNA template.

Translation

RNA (transfer RNA) is the information adapter molecule. Direct interface between amino-acid sequence of protein and information in mRNA, therefore decoding information in mRNA. The acceptor stem is the site where specific amino acid is attached. Anticodon reads information in mRNA sequence by base pairing.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

threatens effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections caused by bacteria, parasites, viruses, and fungi.

Biological Species Concept (BSC)

defines a species as members of populations that actually or potentially interbreed in nature, not according to similarity of appearance. Although appearance is helpful in identifying species, it does not define species. Organisms may appear to be alike and be different species.

Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC)

defines a species as a group of organisms that shares a common ancestor and can be distinguished from other organisms that do not share that ancestor

Primates differ from most mammals by having:

Grasping hands and feet
Collarbone (clavicle)
Radius and ulna (forearm bones)
Forward facing eyes and stereoscopic vision (an overlap in our visual fields)
-Most primates deal with their environment by looking (colour, depth-perception) rather than smelling

Primate Activity Patterns

Nocturnal
Diurnal
Crepuscular
Cathemeral

Nocturnal:

active at night

Diurnal:

active during day

Crepuscular:

active at dawn & dusk

Cathemeral:

active any time of day or night

There are two suborders in Primates

Strepsirhini: lemurs, lorises, galagos. These primates retain primitive features similar to those seen in Eocene primates.
Haplorhines: tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans. These primates have more modern features.

Morphological trends in hominin evolution:

Bipedalism
Expansion in brain size
Changes in dental/cranial features

Epoch

geological term meaning a bunch of earth that formed around the same time

There are three main hypotheses on primate origins:

the arboreal theory
The visual predation theory
Angiosperm coevolution theory

Unisexual species:

only "girls" reproducing through non-sperm reproduction

Sequential hermaphroditism

individual changes sex at some point in its life

XY sex determination

½ of sperm carry X chromosome and the other ½ carry Y chromosomes (common in many animals)

ZW sex-determination

in many birds, the ovum (egg) decides the sexuality of the chick

X0 sex-determination system

in many insects, only one sex chromosome

temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles

temperature sensitive, period during which sex is irreversibly determined

The two prevailing hypotheses on human origin are:

the replacement hypothesis and the multiregional hypothesis.

Medical anthropology

a subfield of anthropology that draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being (broadly defined)

Extant

living representatives of a species exist

Extinct

no living representatives of a species exist

Primate

any extant or extinct member of the order of mammals that includes lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, apes, and humans

Fossils

organic remains that have been transformed by geological processes into a mineralized form

Common theory

an idea based only on conjecture or personal opinion, in contrast to a scientific theory

Scientific theory

A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world which incorporates facts, laws, predictions, and tested hypothesis

Inference

a process of reasoning in which a conclusion is derived from one or more facts

Falsifiable

a study design that enables the researcher to make observations that disprove a hypothesis

Quantitative data

information measurable or quantifiable on a numeric scale, such as body mass or the number of primate species in a protected area

Qualitative data

information based on observations that cannot be reduced to numerical expression, such as markings or eye colour

Botanist

a scientist who studies plants

Classify

the scientific method of placing an organism in a system based on order by classes or categories

Taxonomy

the theory and practice of describing, naming and classifying extant and extinct organisms

Genus (plural: genera)

a taxonomic group of species exhibiting similar characteristics

Binomial nomenclature

the scientific method for assigning names to species and genera

Natural history

study of animals, plants, and minerals

Biogeography

the scientific study of the geographic distribution of organisms

Comparative anatomy

the study of anatomical features of animals of a different species

Paleontology

the study of fossilized life forms

Fixity of species

a theory that derives from Biblical creation, in which each living thing has always existed and will exist by God's acts of creation

Catastrophism

the idea that catastrophic events altered geological features and caused the extinction of plants and animals

Geology

the scientific study of the Earth, what it is made of, and how it changes over time

School of thought

a group of people united in their shared belief of some ideas or concept

Uniformitarianism

a theory that natural processes, such as erosion, operating in the past are the same as those that operate in the present.

Stratigraphy

the study of rock layers (strata) and the relationships among them

Glaciology

the study of glaciers and other natural phenomena involving ice

Zoology

the scientific study of animals

Social darwinism

the misguided application of the concepts of natural selection and biological evolution to the historical development of human societies, placing special emphasis on the idea of "survival of the fittest"

Fitness

the average contribution of an allele or genotype to succeeding generations

Creationism

the largely Christian belief that all life was created by a supernatural deity (typically God), the existence of which is presupposed.

intelligent design

the largely Christian belief that living things occur because of intelligent cause, not as a result of undirected processes, such as evolution and natural selection (e.g. God's plan, "everything happens for a reason")

Microevolution

evolutionary changes within populations

Nucleus

part of a eukaryotic cell containing genetic material

Chromosome

double-stranded DNA molecule in nucleus of eukaryotic cells that carries genes and functions in the transmission of hereditary information

Mitosis

cellular division resulting in two identical daughter cells with the same number of chromosomes as the parent cell

Meiosis

cellular division resulting in each daughter cell receiving half the DNA as the parent cell. Meiosis occurs during formation of egg and sperm cells in mammals.

Gamete

a sex cell; sperm or an egg.

Autosomal

chromosome(s) not involved in determining an organism's sex.

Recombination

the process of which two homologous chromosomes exchange genetic material during gamete formation.

Nucleotide

a building block of DNA, consisting of a base, sugar, and phosphate group

Homozygous

possessing two identical genes or alleles in corresponding locations on a pair of chromosomes: for example YY or yy

Heterozygous

Possessing different genes or alleles. In corresponding locations on a pair of chromosomes: for example: Yy

Dominant alleles

allele of gene pair that is always phenotypically expressed in heterozygous form. For example: Y is always expressed phenotypically when paired with y (Yy)

Recessive alleles

allele phenotypically surpassed in heterozygous for and expressed only in homozygous form. For example: y only expressed phenotypically when paired with y (yy)

Speciation

evolutionary process involving the formation of a new species