Anthropology Exam 1

Jean Baptist Lamarck (1744-1829)

- Identified descent between fossil taxa and living species - Change is slow and gradual proposed change happens over time, changes are adaptations to environment. Law of Use and Disuse, if a body part were used, it got stronger, if not, then it deteriorated

Somatic cells

Any cells in the body other than reproductive cells

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)

Austrian monk commonly known as the "father of genetics," used pea-plants to discover basic patterns of inheritance, allowing him to identify "dominant" and "recessive" traits. Through observing the frequency of certain traits in pea-plant offspring, he was able to not only create basic statistical models that predicted inheritance but also develop the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment to describe heredity.

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)

Challenged Catastrophism Many fossils showed gradual change over long periods of time, "deep time". Lyell introduced "uniformitarianism" --past and current geological processes are one and the same.

Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656)

Early attempt to understand the age of the earth using biblical genealogy from Genesis.

Charles Darwin

English naturalist. He studied the plants and animals of South America and the Pacific islands, and in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) set forth his theory of evolution.

Microevolution

Evolutionary change below the species level; change in the allele frequencies in a population over generations.

What was the widespread view of life on earth during the Middle Ages and Renaissance? How did this begin to change during the Scientific Revolution and the Englightenment? What were the necessary steps that led to the development of a theory of evolution?

Hint: 1. A way to classify and organize information about the natural world; 2. An understanding that species could and did change over time; 3. an understanding that the earth was very old; and 4. a mechanism for how species changed over time.

acclimatization

Physiological adjustment to a change in an environmental factor

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)

Populations have the potential to increase at a faster rate than resources As a result there is intense competition among individuals Eugenicist English economist; believed poor families should have fewer children to preserve the food supply. In 1798 he wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population; opposite of Rousseau

Allen's Rule

The principle that an animal's limb lengths are heat-related; limbs are longer in hot environments and shorter in cold environments.

Bergmann's rule

The principle that an animal's size is heat-related; smaller bodies are adapted to hot environments, and larger bodies are adapted to cold environments.

Taxonomy

The scientific study of how living things are classified

Biological determinism

a line of thought that explains social behavior in terms of who you are in the natural world; the belief that men and women behave differently due to inherent sex differences related to their biology

Mutation

a random error in gene replication that leads to a change

Meiosis

a type of cell division that results in four daughter cells each with half the number of chromosomes of the parent cell, as in the production of gametes and plant spores.

Mitosis

cell division in which the nucleus divides into nuclei containing the same number of chromosomes

Adaptation

inherited characteristic that increases an organism's chance of survival

Macroevolution

large-scale evolutionary changes that take place over long periods of time; evolutionary change above the species level

Georges Cuvier (1769-1832)

largely developed paleontology. Realized that the history of life is recorded in strata containing fossils, and documented the succession of fossil species in the Paris Basin. Realized that the fossils in the older strata were different from the fossils in the newer strata and recognized that extinction was a common occurence, advocated catastrophism even though he was against evolution.

Gene flow

movement of alleles from one population to another

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

scientist who came up with a theory of evolution by means of natural selection at the same time that Darwin was developing his theory

Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)

specialized in taxonomy, developed a binomial system of naming organisms according to genus and species that is still used today. Also adopted a system for grouping similar species into a hierarchy of increasingly general categories.

Polytypic species

species that consist of a number of separate breeding populations, each varying in some genetic trait; composed of local populations that differ in the expression of one or more traits

Eugenics

study of factors that influence the hereditary qualities of the human race and ways to improve those qualities

Genetic drift (founder effect)

the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population; occurs when a few individuals become isolated from a larger population; can affect allele frequencies in a population