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Exam 1 Chapters 1-4

Terms in this set (43)

Which of the following is the best describes microevolution?
Change in genetic makeup of a population over time
Which of the following is the best describes natural selection?
Differential survival and reproduction of individuals in a population
During a study session about evolution, one of your fellow students remarks, "The giraffe stretched its neck while reaching for higher leaves; its offspring inherited longer necks as a result." Which statement is most likely to be helpful in correcting this student's misconception?
Spontaneous mutations can result in the appearance of new traits.
In Darwin's thinking, the more closely related two different organisms are, the
more recently they shared a common ancestor.
Which of these conditions should completely prevent the occurrence of natural selection in a population over time?
individuals is due only to environmental factors.
Structures as different as human arms, bat wings, and dolphin flippers contain many of the same bones, these bones having developed from very similar embryonic tissues. How do biologists interpret these similarities?
- By proposing that humans, bats, and dolphins share a common ancestor
- By identifying the bones as being homologous
evolutionary time, many cave-dwelling organisms have lost their eyes. Tapeworms have lost their digestive systems. Whales have lost their hind limbs. How can natural selection account for these losses?
Under particular circumstances that persisted for long periods, each of these structures presented greater costs than benefits.
Which of the following pieces of evidence most strongly supports the common origin of all life on Earth?
All organisms use essentially the same genetic code.
Ichthyosaurs were aquatic dinosaurs. Fossils show us that they had dorsal fins and tails, as do fish, even though their closest relatives were terrestrial reptiles that had neither dorsal fins nor aquatic tails. The dorsal fins and tails of ichthyosaurs and fish are
- examples of convergent evolution.
- adaptations to a common environment.
It has been observed that organisms on islands are different from, but closely related to, similar forms found on the nearest continent. This is taken as evidence that
island forms and mainland forms descended from common ancestors.
Which of these is the smallest unit upon which natural selection directly acts?
an individual's phenotype
Which of these is the smallest unit that natural selection can change?
a population's gene frequency
Many crustaceans (e.g., lobsters, shrimp, and crayfish) use their tails to swim, but crabs have reduced tails that curl under their shells and are not used in swimming. This is an example of
a vestigial trait
Gill pouches in chick, human, and house-cat embryos are an example of
developmental homology
Your professor wants you to construct a phylogenetic tree of orchids. She gives you tissue from seven orchid species and one lily. What is the most likely reason she gave you the lily?
to serve as an outgroup
Cotton-topped tamarins are small primates with tufts of long white hair on their heads. While studying these creatures, you notice that males with longer hair get more opportunities to mate and father more offspring. You believe that having longer hair is adaptive to these males. You should
determine if hair length is heritable
Which of the following statements best describes the rationale for applying the principle of parsimony in constructing phylogenetic trees?
Similarity due to common ancestry should be more common than similarity due to convergent evolution
Which of the following statements is true about a phylogeny, as represented by a phylogenetic tree?
None of the above answers is correct
Which of the following best describes the evolutionary rationale behind Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART)?
With multiple drugs, more mutations must be present in a virion's genome for that virion to be resistant. The more mutations that must be present, the less likely they are to occur together in the proper combination.
The law of succession states that
fossils more closely resemble the extant species living in the same area
The creationist "argument from design" is based on the idea that complex structures and organisms can't arise by chance. The argument fails because, although _________ is random, ___________ is not; it is directed in the sense of increasing adaptation
mutation/selection
ia virginica is a woodland spring herb with flowers that vary from white to pale pink to bright pink. This plant is primarily pollinated by a bee that prefers pink flowers to white flowers. Claytonia with pink flowers have greater relative fruit set than Claytonia with white flowers. Nevertheless, the percentage of different flower colors remains stable in the study population from year to year. Which of these statements might explain this observation?
Flower color is not heritable but is instead environmentally determined.
A group that contains an ancestor and some, but not all, of its descendants is called a ___________________ group.
paraphyletic
shared traits that were inherited from a common ancestor is called_____________________
monophyly
An individual's contribution of genes to future generations compared to other members of its population is referred to as
fitness
A change of a modified trait back to its ancestral state is called
Evolutionary reversal
CD5 is
The coreceptor protein on some immune cells that that allows HIV to recognize its host cell
CCR5 is
The protein that incorporates HIV into host DNA
The intracellular phase of HIV's life cycle is also called the
Parasitic phase
In its extracellular phase HIV is often referred to as
virion
The enzyme responsible for joining virus DNA to host DNA is called
integrase
The enzyme responsible for making DNA from viral RNA is called
reverse transcriptase
The enzyme responsible for making the viral capsule is called
ligase
Why is HIV called a retrovirus?
Because it creates DNA from its RNA
The most direct effect of HIV is to
Alter the genetic makeup of bone marrow cells
According to Freeman and Herron in Chapter 1 of the textbook, the pattern component of evolutionary biology can be described as
Adaptation and diversity
The Irish "elk" described by Georges Cuvier suggests that
organisms could go extinct
The discovery of Archaeopteryx and other dinosaurs with primitive feathers exemplify the concept of
transitional species
In the textbook and lecture, the comparison of flowers in extant orchid groups was used as an example of
structural homology
The naming and classifying of organisms is referred to as
taxonomy
Ancestral traits
homologs
shared derived traits
synapomorphies
ancestral group used for comparison
outgroup
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