Darwin’s Island Hop
This is the general process through which species change over many generations?
What is evolution?
This is the term for the idea that animals with favorable variations reproduce more successfully than organisms with less favorable variations.
What is survival of the fittest? (natural selection)
This adaptation allows an organism to blend into its background to hide from predators.
What is camouflage?
These are structures that have the same structure but are used for different jobs or functions, like a human arm and a whale flipper.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: What is this evidence of?
What are homologous structures?
These are evidence of common ancestry, who then adapted to different environments.
These are the preserved remains or traces of organisms that lived long ago.
What are fossils?
Darwin hypothesized that birds had different traits because they were better adapted, which helped them do these two things.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: These are the islands where Darwin made his observations.
What are survive and reproduce?
DOUBLE: What are the Galapagos?
This principle of natural selection states that organisms produce more babies than the environment can support.
What is overproduction?
This is the term for when a harmless animal looks like a dangerous one to trick predators into staying away.
What is mimicry?
These are "useless" body parts, like the human tailbone, that were likely used by a distant ancestor.
What are vestigial structures?
This is the relationship between rock position and age of fossils within the rock.
This is what determines whether physical differences are advantageous or not, and thus will get passed on.
What is the environment?
If a giraffe with long neck is better adapted to the environment, this is what the next generation will look like.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY: WHY will the next generation look this way?
What is the next generation will have more long necks?
DOUBLE: Because long necks could survive and reproduce, passing on long neck genes to offspring.
Sharp talons, great eyesight, and silent wings are all examples of this in an owl.
What are physical adaptations?
Wings on a bird and wings on a butterfly look similar and do the same job, but they are built differently and are called this.
What are analogous structures?
If two organisms are closely related, they will have a large amount of this molecule, which carries genetic information, in common.
What is DNA?
This is the scientific term for a group of organisms that can successfully reproduce among themselves.
What is a species?
These are the natural differences, such as size or disease resistance, found among individuals of the same species.
What is variation?
Some animals use this bright "look but don't touch" adaptation to signal that they are poisonous.
What is warning coloration?
This stage of development before an organism is born often shows similarities between different species, suggesting a common ancestor.
What is an embryo (Embryology)?
Scientists use this branching tree diagram to show how different species have evolved from a common point.
What is a cladogram?
This is what will likely happen if an environment changes and a species does not have an adaptive trait to survive.
What is extinction?
This is the term for the formation of a brand-new species as favored adaptations accumulate over time.
What is speciation?
A population of rabbits lives in a snowy area. Half are white and half are brown. If the climate warms and the snow melts earlier each year, this is the variation that will increase in the gene pool.
What is brown fur? (new favorable variation, camoflage)
Analogous structures (different structure, same function) indicate this is true about the organisms.
This is not evidence of a common ancestor.
What is "they evolved to similar environmental challenges"?
On a cladogram, species that are closer together (share a more recent divergence) are this.
What is more closely related, or share a more recent common ancestor?