Fundamentals exam 3 Pt 1

Intelligent design – The theory that life, or the universe, cannot have arisen by chance and was
designed and created by some intelligent entity.
Natural selection – The process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to
survive and produce more offspring.
Teleology – The explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated
causes.
Adaptation – A characteristic that enhances the survival or reproduction of organisms that bear
it relative to alternative character states.
Fitness – Reproductive success as measured by the average per capita rate of increase; also
defined as “Survival of the form (phenotypic or genotypic) that will leave the most copies of
itself in successive generations”; consists of survival and reproduction.
Know the levels of selection – Genic selection, individual selection, and group selection.
Aposematism – A warning signal to potential predators that prey are toxic or noxious.
Batesian mimicry – The resemblance in appearance of a palatable or harmless species to an
unpalatable or dangerous species that is usually avoided by predators.
Müllerian mimicry – The resemblance of an unpalatable or dangerous species to another an
unpalatable or dangerous species.
Competitive exclusion principle – Two competing species that use exactly the same resources
cannot coexist indefinitely; one will eventually be driven to extinction.
Resource (or niche) partitioning – Species divide limited resources to reduce competition.
Character displacement – The phenomenon where differences among similar species whose
distributions overlap geographically are accentuated in regions where the species co-occur, but
are minimized or lost where the species' distributions do not overlap.
Group selection – A mechanism in which natural selection may favor an increase in fitness of a
group of organisms, despite a reduction in individual fitness.
Altruism – The behavior of an animal that benefits another at the expense of its own fitness.
Kin selection – Natural selection in favor of behavior by individuals that increases the chance of
survival of their kin (who share a proportion of their genes).
Preadaptation – A character trait that originally evolved for a particular function that later
served a new and different function.
Exaptation – A more recent term for preadaptation as it does not have teleological implications.

BIO 265: Fundamentals of Evolution
Naturalistic fallacy – What is natural, isn’t necessarily “good”; terms like moral or immoral,
just or unjust, kind or cruel, cannot describe and do not apply to natural selection.