Darwin found that some of the species on the Galapagos islands resembled species of the South American mainland
More than they resembled animals on ecologically similar but distant islands
Which of the following statements would Darwin have disagreed with?
Descent with modification occurs through inheritance of acquired characteristics
Lyell's book Principles of Geology, which Darwin read on board the H.M.S Beagle, argued in favor of which of the following concepts?
Earth's surface is shaped by natural forces that act gradually and are still acting
A dog breeder wishes to develop a breed that does not bark. She starts with a diverse mixture of dogs. Generation after generation, she allows only the quietest dogs to breed. After 30 years of work she has a new breed of dog with interesting traits, but on average, the dogs still bark at about the same rate as other dog breeds. Which of the following would be a logical explanation for her failure?
The tendency to bark is not a heritable trait
Which of the following assumptions or observations contradicts Darwin's idea of natural selection?
Whether an organism survives and reproduces is almost entirely a matter of random chance
Which of the following best expresses the concept of natural selection?
Differential reproductive success based on inherited characteristics
Which of the following statements regarding natural selection is false?
Natural selection starts with the creation of new alleles that are directed toward improving an organism's fitness
Which of the following would prevent an organism from becoming part of the fossil record when it dies?
It is fully decomposed by bacteria and fungi
Which of the following statements regarding the currently available fossil record is false?
The currently available fossil record shows that the first life forms were eukaryotes
Which of the following disciplines has found evidence for evolution based on the native distributions (locations) of living species?
Humans share several features with salamanders. Certain genes and proteins are nearly identical between the two species; both species have four limbs with a similar skeletal structure; the species' early embryos are very similar; and where the salamander has a functional tail, humans have a vestigial tailbone. In evolutionary terms, these are examples of
Deep branch points near the base, or truck, of an evolutionary tree represent ______, while branch points near the tips of the branches represent ______.
Relatively ancient common ancestors...relatively recent common ancestors
Which of the following would a biologist describe as microevolution?
A change in allele frequencies within the gene pool of a population
A biological species is defined as a group of organisms that
Have the potential to interbreed in nature and produce fertile offspring
The earliest discovered fossils are of ______ dating back to ______ years ago.
When the Earth first solidified, what were conditions like?
The atmosphere was rich in gases released in volcanic eruptions; volcanic activity, lightning, and ultraviolet radiation were all much more intense than on today's Earth
A population is
A group of individuals of the same species living in the same place at the same time
Microevolution, or evolution at its smallest scale, occurs when
A population's allele frequencies change over a span of generations
The ultimate source of all new alleles is
Mutation in parent cells (asexual organisms) or in cells that produce gametes (sexual organisms)
Which sentence best describes the true nature of natural selection?
Heritable traits that promote reproduction become more frequent in a population from one generation to the next
A woman struggling with a bacterial illness is prescribed a month's supply of a potent antibiotic. She takes the antibiotic for about two weeks and feels much better. Should she save the remaining two-week supply, or should she continue taking the drug?
She should continue taking the drug until her immune system can completely eliminate the infection. Otherwise the remaining bacteria in her system may recover, and they will probably be resistant
Which of the following would most quickly be eliminated by natural selection?
A harmful allele in an asexual, haploid population
When the continent of Pangaea first split apart, it formed
A northern landmass called Laurasia and a southern landmass called Gondwana
Ever since Darwin, systematics has tried to
Classify species in groups that reflect evolutionary relationships
There are numerous theories of evolution with the common thought
Organisms have evolved over time...beginning with the formation of molecules...then the molecules formed organisms...and those organisms formed more complex organisms
Another way of explaining our origin is intelligent design with the common thought
There is a higher, intelligent being that made all that we see today (Irreducible Complexity)
Blue-footed boobies have webbed feet and are comically clumsy when they walk on land. Evolutionary scientists view these feet as
the outcome of a tradeoff: webbed feet perform poorly on land, but are very helpful in diving for food.
During the 1950's a scientist named Lysenko tried to solve the food shortages in the Soviet Union by breeding wheat that could grow in Siberia. He theorized that if individual wheat plants were exposed to cold, they would develop additional cold tolerance and pass it to their offspring. Based on the ideas of artificial and natural selection, do you think this project worked as planned?
No, because there was no process of selection based on inherited traits.
Broccoli, cabbages, and brussels sprouts all descend from the same wild mustard and can still interbreed. These varieties were produced by
Which of the following represents a pair of homologous structures?
The wing of a bat and the flipper of a whale
A rabbit population consists of animals that are either very dark on top or very light on top. The color pattern is not related to sex. No rabbit shows intermediate coloration (medium darkness). This pattern might result from
A population of 1,000 birds exists on a small Pacific island. Some of the birds are yellow, a characteristic determined by a recessive allele. The others are green, a characteristic determined by a dominant allele. A hurricane on the island kills most of the birds from this population. Only ten remain, and those birds have yellow feathers. Which of the following statements is true?
The hurricane has caused a population bottleneck and a loss of genetic diversity
An elk herd is observed over many generations. Most of the full-grown bull elk have antlers of nearly the same size, although a few have antlers significantly larger or smaller than this average size. The average antler size remains constant over the generations. Which of the following effects probably accounts for this situation.
Darwin was the first person to draw an evolutionary tree, a diagram that represents
Evidence-based hypotheses regarding our understanding of patterns of evolutionary descent
Which of the following is most clearly a case of density-dependent population regulation?
a dangerous new flu strain that is transmitted among humans by sneezing.
After a copper smelter begins operation, local populations of plants downwind of the plant begin to adapt to the resulting air pollution. Scientists document, for example, that the acid tolerance of several plant species has increased significantly in polluted area. This is an example of a response to
Thirty people are selected for a long-term mission to colonize a planet many light years away from Earth. The mission is successful and the population rapidly grows to several hundred individuals. However, certain genetic diseases are unusually common in this group, and their gene pool is quite different from that of the Earth population they have left behind. Which of the following phenomena has left its mark on this population?
In the Hardy-Weinberg equation, the frequency of homozygous dominant individuals in a population is equal to
The sickle-cell allele produces a serious blood disease in homozygotes. Why doesn't natural selection eliminate this allele from all human populations?
In populations where endemic malaria is present, heterozygotes have an important advantage: They are resistant to malaria and therefore are more likely to survive and produce offspring that carry the allele.
In a particular environment, there are no fitness differences among individuals with dark hair and individuals with light hair. The term that best describes this situation is
Tay-Sachs is inherited as an autosomal recessive allele. Homozygous individuals die within the first few years of life. however, there is some evidence that heterozygous individuals are more resistant to tuberculosis. Which of the following statements about Tay-Sachs is true?
This situation is an example of heterozygote advantage if tuberculosis is present in a population
In a hybrid zone, ______ can occur if the reproductive barrier between two speicies is weak, as seen among cichlids in the murky waters of modern Lake Victoria.
Which of the following would a biologist describe as microevolution
a change in allele frequencies within the gene pool of a population
Which of the following statements regarding the definition of species is false?
The morphological species concept relies upon comparing the DND sequences of organisms
Which provides the most general and correct description of the idea of a reproductive barrier?
A biological difference between two species that prevents them from successfully interbreeding
The biological species concept is
difficult to put into practice even for present sexual organisms, and useless for asexual organisms and fossils
Two populations of organisms belong to the same biological species when they
encounter each other, mate, and produce viable, fertile offspring under natural conditions
Which of the following types of reproductive barriers separates a pair of species that could interbreed except that one mates at dusk and the other at dawn?
Which of the following types of reproductive barriers separates a pair of insect species that could interbreed except that one mates on goldenrod flowers an the other on autumn daises that both blossom at the same time?
Two species that sometimes mate and produce vigorous but sterile offspring are separated by
either hybrid breakdown or reduced hybrid fertility
The Monterey pine and the Bishop's pine inhabit some for the same areas of central California. The Monterey pine releases pollin February, while the Bishop's pine does so in April. This is an example of _______ isolation
The geographic isolation of a population from other members of the species and the subsequent evolution of reproductive barriers between it and the parent species describes _______ speciation
Uplift and formation of a mountain range divides a freshwater snail species into two isolated populations. Erosion eventually lowers the mountain range and brings the two populations together again, but when they mate, the resulting hybrids all produce sterile young. This scenario is an example of
In which of the following situations would speciation occur most rapidly? (Assume the conditions described persist as long as necessary and that the species have similar generation times.)
Seven monkeys escape from an amusement park and zoo in South Florida. To everyone's surprise, they establish a small but viable population, coexisting successfully with humans in a partly suburban environment very different from their native African habitat.
Sympatric speciation commonly occurs through _______ in plants, but is more likely to occur ______ in animals.
polyploidy...habitat differentiation and sexual selection
Mate-attracting features such as the bright plumage of a male peacock result from
genetic drift resulting from a disaster that drastically reduces population size is called
the bottleneck effect