Terms and Definitions
The process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth.
What is Evolution?
This scientist published "on the origins of species" which is regarded as the foundation for modern evolutionary theory.
Who is Charles Darwin?
While not technically a species, this hybrid is the cross between a male donkey and a female horse. These animals are sterile and are often put to work as farm animals.
What is a Mule?
This process separates an existing population of animals into two separate ones.
What is isolation?
In Why Evolution is True, author Jerry A. Coyne compares speciation to these two languages.
What are English and German
A group of organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
Often referred to as "Darwin's bulldog" this scientist was a fierce defender of the theory of evolution.
Who is Henry Huxley?
Not technically a species, this animal is a hybrid between a male lion and a female tiger.
What is a liger?
This process changes features on individual animals randomly. These new features can be advantageous, dangerous, or most of the time they are harmless.
What is random mutation?
This is the most common form of isolation throughout history.
What is geographic isolation?
The offspring of two separate species.
What is a hybrid?
This duo of scientists completely synthesized hybrid species in a lab that looked exactly like existing species found in the wild.
Who are Jacqueline Weir and Ruth Ingram?
A type of bird first observed by Charles Darwin on the Galapagos islands.
What is a Finch?
This mechanism describes random fluctuations in the numbers of gene variants in a population.
What is genetic drift?
These islands are both the home of the finches studied in this chapter, but of the birds of paradise from the previous one.
What are the Galapagos islands?
The formation of new and distinct species throughout the course of evolution.
What is speciation?
This German biologist that collected twenty-six species of birds and thirty-eight species of orchids back from his expedition to Dutch New Guinea in 1928
Who is Ernst Mayr?
Two species of a type of flower that are kept separated by using different pollinators. One uses bumblebees while the other uses hummingbirds.
What is Mimulus?
This form of isolation occurs before the formation of a zygote can take place. In most cases mating does not even occur.
What is prezygotic isolation?
This group of people often claim that because they cannot see a species evolve over one lifetime, then speciation does not occur.
Who are creationists?
The fractions of branching events that were accompanied by a ploidy shift across the studied phylogenetic trees for each group.
What is polyploid speciation?
This Russian geneticist was one of the members in the team that proposed the definition of a species that remains the gold standard today.
Who is Theodosius Dobzhansky?
This flowering plant native to Wales was successfully bred in a lab from plants believed to be the common ancestors by the scientists Jacqueline Weir and Ruth Ingram?
What is the Welsh groundsel (Senecio cambrensis)?
Isolation that prevents the formation of fertile offspring. Oftentimes the offspring either dies in the womb, or is born sterile.
What is postzygotic isolation?
Dr. Tamplin does his research on this kind of turtle.
What are wood turtles?