BIOL 1407: CH 22 Study Questions

Both ancestral birds and ancestral mammals shared a common ancestor that was terrestrial. Today, penguins (which are birds) and seals (which are mammals) have forelimbs adapted for swimming. What term best describes the relationship of the bones in the forelimbs of penguins and seals, and what term best describes the flippers of penguins and seals?

Homologous;analogous

DNA sequences in many human genes are very similar to the sequences of corresponding genes in chimpanzees. The most likely explanation for this result is that ____.

Humans and chimpanzees share a relatively recent common ancestor

Of the following anatomical structures, which is homologous to the bones in the wing of a bird?

Bones in the flipper of a whale

If x indicates the location of fossils of two closely related species, then fossils of their most-recent common ancestor are most likely to occur in which stratum?

C

Which of the following is the most accurate summary of Cuvier's consideration of fossils found in the vicinity of paris?

Extinction of species yes; evolution of new species no

Which of the following must exist in a population before natural selection can act upon that population?

Genetic variation among individuals

The rise of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) can be considered to be an example of artificial selection because ____.

Humans synthesize methicillin and create environments in which bacteria frequently come into contact with methicillin

Which of the following observations helped Darwin shape his concept of descent with modification?

South American temperate plants are more similar to the tropical plants of South America than to the temperate plants of Europe

Charles Darwim was the first person to propose ____.

A mechanism for evolution that was supported by evidence

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

Which of these conditions should completely prevent the occurrence of natural selection in a population over time?

All variation between individuals is due only to environmental factors

If one wanted to find the largest number of endemic species, one should visit which of the following geological features (assuming each has existed for several million years)?

An isolated ocean island in the tropics

During a study session about evolution, one of your fellow students remarks, "The giraffe stretch 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 students misconception?

Characteristics acquired during an organisms life are generally not passes on through genes

The role that humans play in artificial selection is to ____.

Choose which organisms breed, and which do not

What was the prevailing belief prior to the time of Lyell and Darwin?

Earth is a few thousand years old, and populations are unchanging

If Darwin had been aware of genes, and of their typical mode of transmission to subsequent generations, with which statement would he most likely have been in agreement?

If natural selection can change one gene's frequency in a population over the course of generations then, given enough time and enough genes, natural selection can cause sufficient genetic change to produce new species from old ones

Natural selection is based on all of the following except ____.

Individuals adapt to their environments and, thereby, evolve

According to a 1999 study, the vegetarian finch is genetically no more similar to the tree finches than it is to the ground finches, despite the fact that it is placed in the same genus as the tree finches. Based on this finding, it is reasonable to conclude that the vegetarian finch ____.

Is no more closely related to the tree finches than it is to the ground finches, despite its classification

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

A high degree of endemism is most likely in environments that are ____.

Isolated and heterogeneous

What must be true of any organ that is described as vestigial?

It must be homologous to some feature in an ancestor

In the mid-1900s, the Soviet geneticist Lysenko believed that his winter wheat plants, exposed to ever-colder temperatures, would eventually give rise to ever more cold-tolerant winter wheat. Lysenko's attempts in this regard were most in agreement with the ideas of ____.

Lamarck

The upper forelimbs of humans and bats have fairly similar skeletal structures, whereas the corresponding bones in whales have very different shapes and proportions. However, genetic data suggest that all three kinds of organisms diverged from a common ancestor at about the same time. Which of the following is the most likely explanation for these date?

Natural selection in an aquatic environment resulted in significant changes to whale forelimb anatomy.

DDT was once considered a "silver bullet" that would permanently eradicate insect pests. Today, instead, DDT is largely useless against many insects. Which of these would have been required for this pest eradication effort to be successful in the long run?

None of the individual insects should have possessed genomes that made them resistant to DDT

Which of the following is not an observation or inference on which natural selection is based?

Poorly adapted individuals never produce offspring

Which of the following represents an idea that Darwin learned from the writings of Thomas Malthus?

Populations tend to increase at a faster rate than their food supply normally allows

Within six months of effectively using methicillin to treat S. aureus infections in a community, all new infections were caused by MRSA. How can this result best be explained?

Some drug-resistant bacteria were present at the start of treatment, and natural selection increased their frequency

Which of Darwins ideas had the strongest connection to Darwin having read Malthus's essay on human population growth?

Struggle for existence

Catastrophism, meaning the regular occurrence of geological or meteorological disturbances (catastrophes), was Cuvier's attempt to explain the existence of ____.

The fossil record

Members of two different species possess a similar-looking structure that they use in a similar fashion to perform the same function. Which information would best help distinguish between an explanation based on homology versus one based on convergent evolution?

The two species share many proteins in common, and the nucleotide sequences that code for these proteins are almost identical.

If the six ground finch species have evolved most recently, then which of these is the most logical prediction?

Their genomes should be more similar to each other than are the genomes of the five tree finch species

If the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus experiences a cost for maintaining one or more antibiotic-resistant genes, then what should happen in environments from which antibiotics are missing?

These bacteria should be outcompeted and replaced by bacteria that have lost these genes

Which of the following statements best describe theories?

They are supported by, and make sense of, many observations

What is true of pseudogenes?

They are vestigial genes

If two modern organisms are distantly related in an evolutionary sense, then one should expect that ____.

They should share fewer homologous structures than two more closely related organisms

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?

Two of the statements above are correct - By identifying the bones as being homologous structures - By proposing that humans, bats, and dolphins share a common ancestor

If x indicates the fossils of two closely related species, neither of which is extinct, then their remains may be found in how many of these strata?

Two strata

Over evolutionary time, many cave-dwelling organisms have lost their eyes. Tapeworms have lost their digestive system. 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

With what other idea of his time was Cuvier's theory of catastrophism most in conflict?

Uniformitarianism

A 14th species that descended from the original ancestral finch, the Cocos Island finch, is endemic to its namesake island, located 550 km off Costa Rica. The Cocos island finch is genetically much more similar to the tree finches than is the vegetarian finch, yet it is classified in its own genus Pinarolaxias. Moreover, the Cocos island finch and the vegetarian finch are the two finch species that are most genetically different from the ancestral Galapagos finch. Thus, if classification is to reflect evolutionary relationships, the vegetarian finch should ____.

be placed in its own genus