EVO lecture 1

Flashcard 1: Q: What is the evolutionary history of mammals? A: Mammals descended from the Cretaceous, all had hair and produced milk.

Flashcard 2: Q: What is Monotremata? A: Mammals that lay eggs, such as the platypus.

Flashcard 3: Q: What are taxons in phylogeny? A: Taxons are different lineages, with more recent species at the top and the last common ancestor at the bottom.

Flashcard 4: Q: What are branching events in phylogeny called? A: Nodes.

Flashcard 5: Q: How are evolutionary relationships determined in phylogeny? A: Through ribosomal DNA sequences, which reconstruct phylogeny.

Flashcard 6: Q: Which domains are considered in phylogeny? A: Bacteria, archaea, and eukarya.

Flashcard 7: Q: Where did humans originate? A: Humans originated from Africa.

Flashcard 8: Q: When did humans spread out across the world and cross the Bering Strait? A: Humans spread out 65,000 years ago and crossed the Bering Strait around 16,000 years ago.

Flashcard 9: Q: How did environmental factors like malaria or cold regions influence adaptations? A: Malaria led to adaptations for resistance, while cold regions led to adaptations for survival in low temperatures.

Flashcard 10: Q: What is the first fundamental observation of evolution? A: All biological diversity is grouped into a hierarchical system of classification (KFCOFGS), and no species is truly unique.

Flashcard 11: Q: Do all species change over time? Provide an example. A: Yes, all species change over time. Example: Trilobites, which lived 500-250 million years ago, showed changes in rib structure over time.

Flashcard 12: Q: What is punctuated change in evolution? Give an example. A: Punctuated change is a sudden change in species, like the morphological changes observed in stickleback fish.

Flashcard 13: Q: How has antibiotic resistance evolved in bacteria? A: Strains like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have increased in resistance over time.

Flashcard 14: Q: How did COVID-19 adapt over time? A: COVID-19 kept mutating and developing new strains, adapting to the human environment.

Flashcard 15: Q: Why didn’t life start out more complex? A: Descendant lineages are modifications of beginning lineages, which leads to simpler forms first.

Flashcard 16: Q: What is adaptation in evolutionary biology? A: Adaptation is a good fit between an organism and the environment it lives in.

Flashcard 17: Q: What is crypsis? A: Crypsis is the ability of an organism to hide from predators.

Flashcard 18: Q: What are vestigial genes (pseudogenes)? A: Imperfect copies of a functional gene that have lost some or all functionality, like the human vitamin C gene.

Flashcard 19: Q: What is suboptimal design in biology? A: Suboptimal design refers to a design that is not perfectly optimized, such as the human airway conflicting with the food pathway.

Flashcard 20: Q: What are the key elements of the evolutionary explanation? A: 1. Change over time 2. Descent with modification 3. Evolution by natural selection

Flashcard 21: Q: What is evolution in terms of observable facts and theory? A: Evolution is both an observable fact and a complex theory explaining biological changes over time.

Flashcard 22: Q: Why is evolutionary biology important? A: It provides scientific explanations for the origin of life and can be used to solve various biological problems.