Darwin & History
The scientist best known for proposing the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Who is Charles Darwin?
The process where organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.
What is natural selection?
A structural or behavioral trait that helps an organism survive in its environment.
What is an adaptation?
The group of islands Darwin visited that greatly influenced his ideas
What are the Galápagos Islands?
The differences in traits among members of the same species
What are variations?
This will happen to brown beetles over time if predatory birds can easily see and eat green beetles.
What is increase? (The green beetle population will decrease).
This term fills the blank in the common phrase: "Survival of the ________."
What is Fittest?
This concept explains why having more offspring than can survive ensures the best-adapted individuals pass on traits.
What is overproduction?
This outcome occurs to a species if it cannot adapt to a changing environment and all its members die out.
What is extinction?
This factor determines which specific traits are "favorable" or "unfavorable."
What is the environment?
The main source of brand-new genetic variations in a population.
What are mutations (DNA changes)?
Similar bone structures in different species (like a human arm and a bat wing) suggest this relationship.
What is sharing a common ancestor?
The remains or traces of organisms that lived long ago
What are fossils?
True or False: Individual organisms can change their traits during their lifetime to adapt to their environment.
What is False? (Populations evolve over generations; individuals do not).
Modern whales have tiny, unused hip bones inside their bodies, which are examples of these useless, leftover evolutionary structures.
What are vestigial structures?