Applied Science: Introduction to Evolution Flashcards

A comprehensive vocabulary review set defining key historical figures, evolutionary concepts, mechanisms, and lines of evidence introduced in the lecture.

Evolution

The change in living things over generations by descent with modification in form or behaviour.

Adaptation

A physical, anatomical, or behavioural feature of an organism that enables it to survive and reproduce in its natural environment better than if it lacked the feature.

Creationism

The belief that all species were created individually by a divine power.

James Ussher

The Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland who deduced in 1650 that the first day of creation fell upon October 23, 4004 BC.

Erasmus Darwin

Charles Darwin's grandfather who wrote Zoonomia (1794–1796) and anticipated early concepts of evolutionary change.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

French naturalist who published Philosophie zoologique (1809) and proposed the transformism theory of evolution.

Transformism Theory

Lamarck's theory of evolution, also known as the inheritance of acquired characteristics or use/disuse theory.

George Cuvier

French scientist who established the reality of extinction in 1801 by demonstrating that mammoths were distinct from living elephants and no longer existed.

Uniformitarianism

The geological concept, termed by William Whewell and advocated by Charles Lyell, stating that Earth's geological features are shaped by modern, gradual processes occurring over long periods of time.

Catastrophism

The geological view, championed by George Cuvier, explaining Earth's geological features through sudden catastrophic events such as biblical floods.

Charles Lyell

Founder of modern geology and author of Principles of Geology (1830–33) who convinced readers of deep time and gradual geological change.

Thomas Robert Malthus

Author of An Essay on the Principle of Population, who noted that population growth outpaces food supply growth, leading to a struggle for existence.

Natural Selection

The mechanism proposed by Charles Darwin in which individuals with advantageous traits have higher reproductive success, causing those traits to increase in a population over time.

The Beagle

The ship on which Charles Darwin spent nearly 5 years (27 Dec 1831 – 2 Oct 1836) circum-navigating the Earth making observations and collecting specimens.

John Gould

The ornithologist who described specimens from the Beagle voyage and identified the likely relatedness of Darwin's Galapagos finches.

Alfred Russel Wallace

Naturalist who independently arrived at the theory of natural selection while suffering from malaria in the Malay Archipelago.

Microevolution

Evolutionary changes in species or traits across time within a population.

Speciation

The evolutionary process by which lineages split and diverge into distinct species.

Macroevolution

Major evolutionary change over time resulting in the derivation of novel life-forms from earlier forms.

Gregor Johann Mendel

Augustinian monk known as the father of modern genetics who formulated the laws of inheritance, providing the missing mechanism of heredity for evolution.

Modern Synthesis

The integration of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian natural selection, also referred to as Neo-Darwinism or the synthetic theory of evolution.

Homology

The study of structural likenesses or anatomical similarities across species derived from a common ancestor.

Vestigial Trait

A rudimentary feature in a species that is homologous to a fully functional structure in closely related species.

Comparative Embryology

The branch of embryology comparing embryo development across species, demonstrating that all vertebrate embryos share a common developmental path due to shared ancestry.

Archaeopteryx

A 145–150 million-year-old transitional bird fossil discovered in Germany that features traits of both non-avian dinosaurs and modern birds.