Evolution
Change over time.
What is evolution?
Unicellular organism lacking a nucleus.
What is a prokaryote?
Specialized cell involved in sexual reproduction.
What is a gamete?
Assemblage of different populations that live together in a defined area.
What is a community?
Average, year-after-year conditions of temperature a d precipitation in a particular region.
What is climate?
Competition among members of a species for food, living space, and the other necessities of life.
What is "struggle for existence"?
Particle made up of nucleic acid, protein, and in some cases lipids that can replicate only by infecting living cells.
What is a virus?
Sequence of DNA that codes for a protein and thus determines a trait.
What is a gene?
Organism that obtains energy from the foods it consumes; also called a consumer.
What is a heterotroph?
Group of ecosystems that have the same climate and dominant communities.
What is a biome?
Ability of an organism to survive and reproduce in its environment.
What is fitness?
Disease causing agent.
What is a pathogen?
Situation in which both alleles of a gen contribute to the phenotype of the organism.
What is codominance?
Conversion of nitrates into nitrogen gas.
What is denitrification?
Temperate-zone estuary dominated by salt-tolerant grasses above the low-tide line and by seagrasses under water.
What is a salt marsh?
Principle that each living species has descended, with changes, from other species over time.
What is "descent with modification"?
Process in which a virus enters a cell, makes a copy of itself, and causes the cell to burst.
What is the lytic cycle?
Situation in which one allele is not completely dominant over another.
What is incomplete dominance?
Organism that feeds on plant and animal remains and other dead matter.
What is a detritivore?
Moderate climate zone between the polar zones and the tropics.
What is the temperate zone?
Process by which individuals that are better suited to their environment survive and reproduce most successfully; also called natural selection.
What is "survival of the fittest"?
Form of sexual reproduction in which a paramecia and some prokaryotes exchange genetic information.
What is conjugation?
Trait controlled by two or more genes.
What is a polygenic trait?
Collection of all the organisms that live in a particular place, together with their nonliving environment.
What is an ecosystem?
Condition of Earth's atmosphere at a particular time and place.
What is weather?