Mechanisms of Evolution
This mechanism is responsible for the creation of new alleles due to random alterations in the base pairs of gamete producing cells.
What is mutation?
Male frigate birds work hard to attract a female. He builds a nest that he must defend from challenging males. His courtship call resonates through his inflated red throat pouch to attract females. What type of selection explains these adaptations and behaviors?
What is sexual selection?
Type of fossil in which as organic material decomposes, it is replaced with minerals. Also known as "petrification."
What is mineralized?
This term describes populations of organisms that have the potential to interbreed under natural conditions to produce viable offspring.
What is a species?
Layers of rock/sediment; used to relatively date fossils
What are strata?
A pollen grain moves from one population of grass plants to another population of grass plants.
What is gene flow?
This term describes when the two sexes look or behave differently during reproduction.
What is sexual dimorphism?
Some organisms have anatomical structures that are greatly reduced and no longer serve a function. Name this type of (homologous) structure.
What is a vestigial structure?
Type of prezygotic barrier:A male flower of a species begins to release its pollen before the female flowers have emerged.
What is temporal barrier/isolation?
Process by which we can absolutely date fossils based on analysis of isotopic ratios
What is radiometric dating?
This type of genetic drift occurs when allele frequencies change due to a random event causing catastrophic mortality within a population. Be specific.
What is the bottleneck effect?
Populations of the rock pocket mouse in the American southwest living on lava rock outcroppings have evolved darker fur than their sand and light rock dwelling counterparts. This is what type of natural selection?
What is directional selection?
Type of comparative anatomy that demonstrates that organisms evolving from a fairly recent common ancestor have homologous tissues and structures.
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
What is embryology?
Type of post-zygotic barrier:
Two different species mate and produce a hybrid. The hybrid offspring is fertile but when it creates offspring, those offspring are sterile.
What is hybrid breakdown?
Fossilized footprints
What is a trace fossil?
True or False?
Migration occurs when some individuals of a population colonize a new habitat.
What is FALSE?
Type of selection that allows a lethal disease to persist; examples are sickle-cell disease and cystic fibrosis.
What is balancing selection?
This fossil evidence of evolution appears to be the missing link between aquatic vertebrates/fish and terrestrial vertebrates/amphibians.
What is Tiktaalik?
Type of allopatric speciation:
A large border wall is erected that divides a population of ground dwelling mammals.
What is vicariance?
This term describes organisms that are more closely related to each other on a phylogenetic tree than any other group because they share a more recent common ancestor.
What is a monophyletic group?
Fish and penguins have analogous features, such as similar body shape, due to similar environmental pressures. What term describes this process?
What is convergent evolution?
Type of sexual selection:
A male gray triggerfish has a "terratory" that he must defend from other males that would otherwise destroy his nests and attack his females and their eggs.
What is intersexual selection?
The finches of the Galapagos, the marsupials of Australia, and the honeycreepers of Hawaii likely all evolved from a common ancestor displaced by the founder effect. Name this pattern of evolution. Be specific.
What is adaptive radiation?
An error in cell division creates a tetraploid germ cell in a plant. This will result in diploid gametes. If the plant can self pollination/fertilize, it will produce tetraploid offpspring.
What is autopolyploidy?
Lamarkian "mechanism" of evolution presuming organisms are "trying to evolve" in order to survive.
What is goal oriented?