BIO EXAM 3

What prompted Darwin to publish his book decades after he began writing it?

A colleague (Alfred Wallace) was about to publish a similar manuscript.

Imagine you were able to travel back in time to any place you wanted to witness the evolution of humans. Answer the following question related to your journeys. On which continent would you have seen the very earliest members of Homo sapiens?

Africa

Which of the following is evidence for evolution?

All are evidence for evolution

Which of the following mechanisms can drive evolution?

All of the above

The eastern meadowlark and the western meadowlark are two bird species that look very similar to each other. Why do biologists not consider them the same species?

All of the above are correct.

Which of the following features are used to identify chordates?

All of the above are features used to identify chordates.

Which of the following are considered to be fossils?

All of these

What is the leading hypothesis for what might have brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs?

An asteroid impact

What is an exception to the standard biological species concept used to define a species?

Asexual species cannot be distinguished using this concept.

What is the name for the study of the geographic distribution of species?

Biogeography

What events can lead to offspring having a unique arrangement of their parents' genes?

Both of these

Which of the following best defines microevolution?

Changes in genes within a population over time

Which classification grouping includes the greatest number of species?

Domain

Which grouping includes all of the protists?

Domain Eukarya

Before Darwin published his work, Lamarck and others had suggested mechanisms for evolution. By what means did Darwin propose species evolved over time? Overproduction of young Passing on acquired traits Survival of the strongest Natural Selection

Natural selection

Can you inherit physical traits that your parents acquired during their lifetime

No

Which process of evolution does not change the total number of species?

Nonbranching evolution

Which two observations led Darwin to conclude that there is competition for survival?

Overproduction and limited resources

All prokaryotes are in the domain ________.

Prokaryotes are in two different domains

What field of science has as its goal to classify all living things into a hierarchical system of relatedness that runs from most broad to most narrow?

Taxonomy

What is radiometric dating?

The process of determining the age of the fossils from radioactive isotopes

Prior to the publication of Charles Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, what was the prevailing public consensus regarding species evolution?

That species were permanent and unchanging

Which of the following phyla is the most diverse and numerous?

The arthropods

What is the smallest unit that can evolve?

The population

A zombie apocalypse wipes out almost the entire human species before the zombie threat is eliminated. Only a group of 100 people who were at a family reunion on an uninhabited island survived. They returned to the mainland completely unaware of what had happened to everyone. Answer the following question regarding the few survivors that now begin to rebuild the human population. Despite an abundance of habitat, why will it be difficult for the human species to recover?

The reduced genetic diversity will make it difficult for the population to adapt to new diseases or other environmental changes.

Use the phylogenetic tree below to answer the following question.

The sloth bear

In many ways a mule is a superior animal to the horse or donkey. They are often stronger and can jump higher than either of their parents. Why then are they considered to be a "weak hybrid"?

They are sterile.

Which of the following best describes cnidarians?

They have radial body symmetry, tissues, and stinging cells

How do bony fish regulate buoyancy?

With an air-filled swim bladder

A requirement of cladistics is that a grouping must include ________.

a common ancestor and all its descendants

Flatworms are most closely related to the

annelids

The modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s melded together Darwin's findings with ________.

genetics

All mammals

have mammary glands

Natural selection acts on ________, and ________ evolve.

individuals; populations

A weed that exhibits resistance to an herbicide ________.

inherited the gene that made it resistant to the herbicide

The older fossils are typically found in the ________ sediments.

lower

Gastropods are the most numerous group of mollusks and include the

snails and slugs

Individuals with variations that make them best suited to their environment will, on average, be more likely to

survive and reproduce

If two organisms of different species share more similar DNA sequences with each other than with other species, we can conclude that ________.

these two species are very closely related

When did life first appear on the planet?

3.5 billion years ago

Some of the "branches" of a phylogenetic tree do not extend to the end. What do these lines represent?

Extinct species

Speciation is always a slow, gradual process.

False

Which grouping immediately follows Order in the classification hierarchy?

Family

What term describes the failure of one species' sperm to fertilize the egg of a different species?

Gametic incompatibility

Of those listed below, which category of classification is the most narrow?

Genus

Which model of evolution is closest to what was originally suggested by Charles Darwin?

Graduated model

Which of the following most often should lead to allopatric speciation?

Habitat isolation

What contribution did Charles Lyell make?

He provided the first evidence that the Earth is much older than was previously thought.

Which one of the following is a defining characteristic of animals but not of plants?

Heterotrophic

What does "fitness" mean when speaking in terms of evolution?

How many offspring an individual produces

Human embryos have a developmental stage during which they have a tail and pharyngeal pouches (those pouches develop into gills in fish). How can we explain these characteristics of human embryos?

Human embryos share a common ancestor who had gills.

What defines a population in evolution?

Interbreeding members of the same species

What characterizes terrestrial tetrapods?

Lives on land, has four limbs

What is the original source of variation that natural selection can act upon?

Mutation

Comparing DNA and protein sequences to find evidence of a shared evolutionary history is called

bioinformatics

Comparing the body structures of organisms to find evidence of a shared evolutionary history is called ________.

comparative anatomy

A zombie apocalypse wipes out almost the entire human species before the zombie threat is eliminated. Only a group of 100 people who were at a family reunion on an uninhabited island survived. They returned to the mainland completely unaware of what had happened to everyone. Answer the following question regarding the few survivors that now begin to rebuild the human population. Certain traits will have been lost from the gene pool forever. Some may be obvious, like people with red hair or double jointed thumbs. Others will be less obvious, like the ability to process cholesterol or being allergic to peanuts. This loss of diversity in a reduced population is called ________.

bottleneck effect

Evolution can be best defined as ________.

change in allele frequency in a population

The slow drifting of sections of the earth's crust, sometimes separating, other times colliding, is known as ________.

plate tectonics

The rapid diversification of species seen in the fossil record followed by long periods of stasis is part of the ________ model of evolution.

punctuated equilibrium