Natural Selection
He is the British naturalist credited with developing the theory of evolution by natural selection after his voyage.
Who was Charles Darwin?
This term describes competition for resources between individuals of the same species, such as two male deer fighting for mates.
What is Intraspecific Competition?
The branch of biology and medicine that studies the physical structures of all living things.
What is Anatomy?
Fossils found buried deeper underground are _____ than fossils found near the surface. Fill in the blank
What is older?
Unlike natural selection, this process involves humans deliberately breeding organisms for specific, desirable traits.
What is artificial selection (or selective breeding)?
This term describes a massive, rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth, an environmental crisis that has occurred five times in geological history.
What is a Mass Extinction?
The maximum population size of a species that an environment can sustain indefinitely without degrading the ecosystem.
What is Carrying Capacity?
The scientific study of the similarities and differences in the physical structures of different species.
What is Comparative Anatomy?
This law of geology states that in an undisturbed sequence of rock layers, the oldest layers (and the fossils within them) will be at the bottom and the youngest at the top.
This is the primary source of all new genetic variation, caused by a random change in an organism's DNA sequence.
What is Mutation?
The constant, slow motion of the massive, rigid slabs of rock that make up the Earth's outer shell (the lithosphere)
What are Tectonic Shift?
This term describes competition between individuals of different species, such as lions and hyenas fighting over the same prey.
What is Interspecific Competition?
A human's arm and a lizard's front legs are used for similar functions. In addition, their structures show remarkable similarity---with the same numbers of bones in the upper arm, forearm, and hand. These similarities likely ____ due to common evolutionary history. Fill in the blank
What is Are?
The scientific method used to determine the chronological order of past event, geological formations, or archaeological artifacts without assigning them a specific numerical age.
What is Relative Dating?
In evolutionary biology, this "f-word" measures an organism's ability to survive to reproductive age, find a mate, and produce viable offspring.
What is fitness?
These structures, such as the human appendix of the pelvic bones of a whale, are remnants of organs that had a function in an early ancestor but are now largely useless.
What are Vestigial Structures?
Paleontologists use this specific dating method, which measures the decay of radioactive isotopes to determine the absolute age of a fossil or the rock it was found in.
What is Absolute Dating?
Darwin famously studied the diverse, specialized beak shapes of these birds on the Galápagos Islands.
What are finches?
The study of the distribution of organisms on Earth. The patterns of distribution are best explained by evolution. For example, species with common features can be found in similar environments where they would have experienced similar selective pressures.
What is Biogeography?
The structure of a bat's wing is entirely different from that of a bird's wing---though, both are considered "wings", and are used for flight in either species. These are ___________
What are Analogous Structures?