Key Terms
Cumulative changes in heritable characteristics of a population over time.
What is evolution?
Occurs when populations have genetic variations, with some variations having an advantage over others to the population in its particular environment.
What is natural selection?
Similar in position, structure, and evolutionary origin but not necessarily in function.
What is homologous?
The process by which new species form.
What is speciation?
Biston betularia is a moth active at night and roosts during the day. What is its common name?
What is peppered moth?
Evolution is the change in the ______ frequency of a population's gene pool over successive generations.
What is allele?
A form of selection where humans select the animal of plant with the best characteristics and try to create a breed that retains these characteristics.
What is artificial selection?
A limb with five digits, found in amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
What is a pentadacyl limb?
Type of variations that have distinct cateogries of gene variations and are not affected by the environment, e.g. blood type.
What are discontinuous variations?
The key event in 19th century UK that instigated the evolution of the peppered moth.
What is the industrial revolution?
The heritable characteristics of a population that are encoded by _____ and transferred between generations as alleles.
What are genes?
A group of animals within a species that have specific and similar characteristics.
What is a breed?
Type of evolution that occurs when two separate species have a similar structure, but use it in different ways because of their environment.
What is divergent evolution?
Type of variations that have a wide range of characteristics for each trait and is highly influenced by the environment, e.g. skin colour.
What is continuous variation?
The change in the melanin-producing allele frequency from light to dark due to environmental changes brought on by industry pollution.
What is industrial melanism?
The preserved remains or traces of any organism from the remote past.
What are fossils?
The ancestor of the dog population.
What is a wolf/wolf-like animal?
A process in which organisms rapidly diverge from the form of the original species into several new forms specialised to make use of different environmental niches.
What is adaptive radiation?
Human skin colour is a type of ______ variation.
What is continuous?
The gradual change in the allele frequency of a population due to the slow replacement of one gene of another.
This transitional fossil found in 1860 shows the transition of birds from prehistoric reptiles.
What is Archaeopteryx?
If the scientific name of the gray wolf is Canis lupus, what is the scientific name of domesticated dogs?
What is Canis lupus familiaris / Canis familiaris?
What is convergent evolution?
Speciation can occur in two fashions: linearly or in ________.
What are branches?
A balance between both forms of the allele variations within a population.