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Environmental Science Chapter 5

Terms in this set (35)

Evolution
Change in a kind of organism over time; process by which modern organisms have descended from ancient organisms.
Gene
a unit of heredity that is transferred from a parent to offspring and is held to determine some characteristic of the offspring.
Mutations
a random error in gene replication that leads to a change
Genetic drift
A change in the gene pool of a population due to chance
Natural Selection
A process in which individuals that have certain inherited traits tend to survive and reproduce at higher rates than other individuals because of those traits.
fitness
how well an organism can survive and reproduce in its environment
adaptation
inherited characteristic that increases an organism's chance of survival
artificial selection
Selection by humans for breeding of useful traits from the natural variation among different organisms
speciation
the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.
extinction
A term that typically describes a species that no longer has any known living individuals.
niche
Full range of physical and biological conditions in which an organism lives and the way in which the organism uses those conditions
tolerance
the diminishing effect with regular use of the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drug's effect
resource partitioning
the differentiation of niches that enables similar species to coexist in a community
predation
An interaction in which one organism captures and feeds on another organism
coevolution
the influence of closely associated species on each other in their evolution.
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