Vocabulary
A heritable change in DNA that can create new alleles.
What is a mutation?
Fossils showing intermediate forms that link ancestral and derived species.
What are transitional fossils (part of the fossil record)?
Random changes in allele frequencies, especially strong in small populations.
What is genetic drift?
Reproductive isolation caused by differences in mating times.
What is temporal isolation?
A small group starts a new population with allele frequencies different from the original population.
What is the founder effect?
The observable traits of an organism produced by genotype and environment.
What is a phenotype?
Scientist who proposed evolution by natural selection and wrote On the Origin of Species.
Who is Charles Darwin?
Independent evolution of similar traits in unrelated lineages due to similar selective pressures.
What is convergent evolution?
Speciation that occurs when populations are geographically separated.
What is allopatric speciation?
A severe reduction in population size that randomly eliminates alleles.
What is the bottleneck effect?
The relative reproductive success of an organism in its environment.
What is fitness?
Similarities in nucleotide or amino-acid sequences used to infer common ancestry.
What are similarities in DNA/proteins?
Rapid diversification of a lineage into many species filling different niches.
What is adaptive radiation?
Mating behavior differences (songs, displays) that prevent interbreeding.
What is behavioral isolation?
All alleles of all genes in a population.
What is gene pool?
All alleles of all genes in a population.
What is a gene pool?
Geologist who argued for slow, gradual geological processes and helped establish deep time.
Who is Charles Lyell? (or Who is James Hutton for earlier uniformitarian ideas)
Structures that have similar function but evolved independently (not from a common ancestor).
What are analogous structures?
Speciation without geographic separation, sometimes via polyploidy in plants.
What is sympatric speciation?
Movement of alleles between populations via migration and interbreeding.
What is gene flow?
Humans intentionally breed organisms for preferred traits.
What is artificial selection?
Scientists who simulated early-Earth conditions and produced organic molecules in the lab.
Who are Stanley Miller and Harold Urey?
Reciprocal evolutionary change between interacting species (example: predator and prey).
What is coevolution?
Physical incompatibility of genitalia or reproductive structures preventing successful mating.
What is mechanical isolation?
The relationship: an organism’s specific allele combination for a trait.
What is a genotype?