| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Evolution | a change in populations over time |
| Artificial Selection | breeding organisms with specific traits in order to produce offspring with identical traits |
| Natural Selection | a mechanism for change in populations that occurs when organisms with certain variations survive, reproduce, and pass their variations to the next generation |
| Mimicry | enables one species to resemble another species |
| Camouflage | enables species to blend with their surroundings |
| Fossils | provide a record of early life and evolutionary history |
| Homologous structures | similar structural features with a common evolutionary origin |
| Analogous structures | body parts of organisms that do not have a common evolutionary origin but are similar in function |
| Vestigial structure | a body structures that has no function in the present-day organism but was probably useful to an ancestor |
| Embryo | the earliest stage of growth and development of both plants and animals |
| Biochemistry | Comparison of the DNA and RNA of different species |
| Gene pool | all of the alleles of the population's genes |
| Allelic frequency | the percentage of any specific allele in the gene pool |
| Genetic equilibrium | a population in which the frequency of alleles remains the same over generations |
| Genetic drift | the alteration of allelic frequencies by chance events |
| Stabilizing selection | favors average individuals in a population |
| Directional selection | favors one of the extreme variations of a trait |
| Disruptive selection | favors individuals with either extreme of a trait's variation |
| Speciation | the evolution of new species |
| Geographic isolation | occurs when a physical barrier divides a population |
| Reproductive isolation | occurs when formerly interbreeding organisms can no longer mate and produce fertile offspring |
| Polyploid | a multiple of the normal set of chromosomes |
| Gradualism | idea that species originate through a gradual change of adaptations |
| Punctuated equilibrium | speciation occurs relatively quickly, in rapid bursts, with long periods of genetic equilibrium in between |
| Adaptive radiation | the result when ancestral species evolves into an array of species to fit a number of diverse habitats |
| Divergent evolution | species that once were similar to an ancestral species diverge, or become increasingly distinct |
| Convergent evolution | distantly related organisms evolve similar traits |
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