Darwin's Voyage
The islands whose unique species strongly influenced Darwin’s thinking about evolution are called what?
What is the Galapagos Islands?
When environmental conditions favor individuals with intermediate traits rather than extremes, this form of selection occurs.
What is stabilizing selection?
Organisms that obtain energy by consuming other organisms are called this.
What are consumers/ heterotrophs?
Structures that no longer serve their original function but persist from ancestors are called this.
What are vestigial structures?
The ability of organisms to maintain internal stability despite extreme external conditions is called this biological process.
What is homeostasis?
Darwin observed that finches on different islands had different beak shapes adapted to different ....
What are ecological niches/ food sources?
Traits that improve survival or reproduction in a specific environment are known as this.
What are adaptations?
An interaction in which both species benefit, such as pollinators and flowering plants, is called this.
What is mutualism?
The wings of bats and the wings of insects serve the same function but evolved independently; these structures are described as what?
What is analogous traits?
Organisms that live and reproduce in extremely hot environments, such as hot springs or hydrothermal vents, are called this type of extremophile.
What are thermophiles?
Darwin collected mockingbirds and finches whose differences between islands suggested that species were not fixed but could ______ over time.
What is change/ evolve?
When reproductive isolation evolves without geographic separation, this type of speciation occurs.
What is sympatric speciation?
The total mass of living organisms present in a given area or trophic level is called this.
What is biomass?
The gradual change in fossil forms observed in rock layers over time supports this evolutionary idea proposed by Darwin.
What is descent with modification?
This domain of life includes many extremophiles and is genetically distinct from both bacteria and eukaryotes.
What are Archaea?
After reading Malthus’s essay on population growth, Darwin realized that more individuals are born than can survive, leading to this evolutionary struggle.
What is competition?
When different populations of the same species evolve increasingly different traits due to adaptation to different environments, this pattern is known as what?
What is divergent evolution?
When competing species evolve to use different resources or habitats, reducing competition and allowing coexistence, this evolutionary outcome is called what?
What is resource partitioning?
The rare reappearance of an ancestral trait, such as hind limb structures in modern whales or tails in humans, is known as this evolutionary phenomenon.
What is an atavism?
When populations adapt to extreme environments and eventually become reproductively isolated from the original population, this evolutionary outcome may occur.
What is speciation?
Darwin’s geological observations during the voyage supported Lyell’s idea that small changes over long periods could produce major differences, a concept that also applies to evolution through this process.
What is gradualism?
Rapid evolution observed in response to human pressures, such as pesticide or antibiotic resistance, is sometimes called this.
What is contemporary evolution?
When a population exceeds the number of individuals an environment can sustain and subsequently declines sharply, this population response is known as what?
What is a population crash?
The fact that humans and other mammals share nonfunctional genetic sequences at the same locations in the genome is considered strong evidence for evolution because these sequences are inherited from this.
What is a common ancestor?
Adaptations that allow survival in extreme environments often reduce fitness in normal environments, illustrating this evolutionary concept where improvement in one trait comes at the expense of another.
What is an evolutionary tradeoff?