Evolutionary Thinking I
Comparing similar structures across different species. Still in use today in the study of evolution.
What is comparative anatomy?
In Western European thought, the individual most closely associated with evolution is...
Who is Charles Darwin?
In History of Animals how did Aristotle organize animal and plant life?
What is animals above plants? Aristotle created the first zoological taxonomies ever created. Natural groups based on structure, physiology, mode of reproduction, and behavior.
True or False? Weismann’s mouse-tail experiment showed that offspring do not inherit traits that the parents acquired during their lifetimes.
What is True?
Evolution has resulted in the optimal design for the human body because natural selection is a linear process and produces ever more perfect forms.
What is false? Natural selection cannot create new anatomical structures as a response to changes in environmental pressures.
He believed Earth's landscapes like mountains and oceans formed over long period of time through gradual processes. Contributed to uniformitarianism.
Who is James Hutton?
The idea that a species, once created, remains unchanged over time. Challenged by Darwin through his observations of slight variations of armadillos and other species of plants and animals (fossilized and alive).
Long before European scientists understood evolution, this Islamic scholar wrote about: the struggle for existence, the transformation of species over time, environmental factors that influence the process
Who is Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī aka Al-Jahiz?
Looked at the concept of dominance and recessiveness of characteristics and that there is no blending of inherited characteristics.
What did Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) discover through his experiments with pea plants? He also found characteristics are inherited and expressed independently of each other.
It is impossible to observe evidence of natural selection and evolution occurring today.
What is false? Modern science provides numerous observable, real-time examples of evolution, including antibiotic resistance in bacteria, pesticide resistance in insects, and rapid adaptations in species like Galápagos finches.
Who proposed the principle that "rocks and strata (layers of rock) increase in age the further down they are in a geological sequence....same principle must apply to any fossils contained within the rock"
Who is Charles Lyell?
How did Darwin define evolution?
What is descent with modification? (Species share a common ancestor yet change over time, giving rise to new species. )
His methodology of investigation, specifically using experiments to verify theory is similar to what later became known as the modern scientific method.
Who is Ibn al-Haytham?
Which term refers to changes in gene frequencies between generations within a population?
microevolution
True or false? Natural selection can create entirely new anatomical structures out of thin air.
What is false? Natural selection can only act upon existing variation.
What is based on the idea that as animals adapted to their environments through the use and disuse of characteristics, with their adaptations passed on to their offspring through reproduction.
What is the Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics?
True or false? Charles Darwin was never able to discover the mechanisms that caused variation within members of the same species or the means by which traits were inherited.
What is true?
Provided proof that some specifics had become extinct through detailed and comprehensive analyses of large fossil quadrupeds
Who is Georges Cuvier?
What keeps one species distinct from another?
Speciation
As a species, humans continue to respond to selective pressures biologically and culturally. This means that...
What is, humans are still evolving?
Suggests the rate of population growth can exceed the rate of increase of the food supply. Thomas Malthus suggested populations of animals and plants were naturally constrained by their food supply, resulting in reductions in population in times of scarcity.
What is carrying capacity?
the merging of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian evolution that resulted in a unified theory of evolution
The Modern Synthesis
Which an English politician first codified The Scientific Method?
Who is Francis Bacon?
The Dobzhansky-Muller model is an explanation for human-caused climate change.
What is false? It models how reproductive isolation evolves through negative epistatic interactions (incompatibilities) between new alleles that arise and fix in different, isolated populations.
True or false? Natural selection can only act on characteristics that influence reproductive success.
What is false? Deleterious traits that have nothing to do with one's ability to reproduce and successfully rear offspring to reproductive age will continue to be passed on.