Evolution midterm 2 lecture questions

What are the results of a selection experiment where mice were housed @ 3 degrees Celsius for multiple generations

"Eskimo" mice evolved greater body size & larger fat deposits

Why do trade-offs sometimes not exist? Check all that apply

--"grade shifts" can change mean values, thus causing differences in apparent trade-offs at various phylogenetic levels --trade-offs may only appear @ the extremes of distribution

Match the organisms with their adaptive behavior

--Yucca plant mutualist → enjoys pollination, tolerate eggs on flower --Yucca moth mutualist → pollinates plant, has hsot for eggs --Yucca moth mutualist /cheater --> Lays eggs on flowers in large numbers --Yucca plant cheated → drops flowers with too many eggs --Yucca moth evolved to cheat → Lays eggs on fruit

selection experiments

--are one way to produce "useful" organisms --can be viewed as the earliest form of genetic engineering --can be used to estimate narrow-sense heritability --can alter behavior and physiology, not just morphology

Living fossils

--can be illustrated by living (extant) horseshoe crabs --show low(slow) rates of evolutionary change over long period of time(at least for visible traits)

Coevolution can occur between ______ and ________

--consumers ; resources --predators ; prey --host ; parasite --competitor ; competition

The Red Queen Hypothesis:

--describes an evolutionary "arm race" between hosts and parasites --is supported by evidence of sexual populations coinciding with parasitism --is the mechanism for negative frequency -dependent selection in hosts

factor s causing evolutionary constraints include:

--external factor ⇒ ecological interactions --internal factor ⇒ pleiotropic gene action

Which conditions lead to efficient fossil creation?

--fine sediment --high mineral-content water

Alternative hypothese about the cause of (tight) allometric relationships include:

--genetic, developmental, physiological, and/or biomechanical "constraints" --natural selection keeps organisms close to the general allometric trend

R.A. Fischer's Runaway Process could lead to rapid speciation. A number of animal groups appear consistent with this model, including:

--hummingbirds --malaysian stalk-eyed flies --birds of paradise

Which of the following are causes of adaptive radiation.

--invasion of island archipelagos --mass extinctions --environmental change --key innovations

Which of these describes sedimentary rock

--is it the results of the accumulation of many broken rocks, deposited in layers --often contains fossils

The endosymbiotic theory: (Check all that apply)

--is supported by genetic relationships between organelles & bacterial taxa --proposes an explanation for the mitochondria/chloroplasts of eukaryotic cells

Which of the following describes the Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium

--it assumes that rapid evolutionary change is coupled with splitting of lineages --it was developed by Niles Eldridge & Stephen Jay Gould

Possible examples of evolutionary constraints include:

--marsupial immune system constrains evolution of placental exchange --no birds are viviparous --extreme diversity of hummingbird species --no snakes are herbivorous --incompatibility between sexual & parental behavior in some birds

Which hypothesis/hypotheses describe why organisms age and die? Check all that apply

--mutation accumulation hypothesis --antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis

It is important to replicate lines in a selection experiment because

--one line of selection compared with control is similar to a 2-species comparison --differences in correlated traits could be caused by pleiotropy --difference in the trait under selection could be caused by founder effects

What are males more likely to abandon their offspring

--opportunities for further breeding --lack of certainty about parentage

What are the assumptions of competitive games, according to Game theory? Check all

--players are self-interested --players behave rationally --players do not communicate or bargain

What are the requirements for invading a terrestrial habitat?

--protection from desiccation(drying) --greater structural support in response to gravity --development of a vascular system

What can be inferred from the graph below depicting various species of pinnipeds?

--sexual dimorphism in body size (males bigger than females) increases with harem size --reversed sexual size dimorphism (females bigger than males) sometimes occurs --sexual selection may be driving an increase in male body size

Sexual selection can lead to:

--sexual size dimorphism --traits that may "handicap" organisms --strange behaviors --strange morphology

Match geological activity with results

--subduction zone → mountains --thermal plumes → volcanoes --separating plates → new crust

"Components of (Darwinian) Fitness" would include

--survivorship --fecundity --# of mates obtained --age @ first reproduction

Non-additive interactions between alleles @ different loci is definition of:

-epistasis (Vi = variance caused by epistatic deviations, i.e non-addictive interactions between alleles @ different loci)

What is the fitness likelihood for a semelparous female with 0.5 chance of living to sexual maturity and an average offspring number of 10 ?

5

What is the fitness likelihood of an iteroparous female with: An average lifespan of 4 Sexual maturity at age 2 A 0.75 chance of living at age 2 A 0.5 chance of living to age 3 A 0.25 chance of living to age 4 Average # offspring per year is 4

7

Who wrote the following?"The whole organism is so tied together that when slight variations in one part occur, and are accumulated through natural selection, other part become modified"

Charles Darwin

sexual selection was first discussed by

Charles Darwin

True/False : most variation in phenotype is discrete, like mendel's peas

False; Variation in most phenotypic traits is continuous or quantitative, not discrete like Mendel's peas

Observed evolutionary rates in haldanes also decline in proportion to the time interval over which they are measured. This decline is not just an artifact of using a ratio or some other mathematical/statistical issue [T/F]

True

What is narrow-sense heritability?

a component of phenotypic variation caused by additive genetic effects that can be passed on from parents to offspring

R.A. Fisher's Runaway Hypothesis explains a sudden appearance of huge variation in closely related species due to sexual selection. ____also explains a sudden appearance of huge variation closely related species, but caused by natural selection

adaptive radiations

One of two or more alternative forms of a gene that are found @ same place on a chromosome is termed:

alleles

Vd is variance caused by:

dominance deviations--non-additive interactions b/t alleles @given locus

Why do rates of evolution seem to become lower over longer time scales?

evolution is constrained by various factors

Cope's Rule, as originally proposed, suggested that

evolutionary lineages often exhibit increased body size over time

Among species of pinnipeds, sexual dimorphism in body size decreased in relation to harem size

false

Heritability often increase across generations in a selection experiment

false

Iteroparous species breed once and then die [T/F]

false

Scientist were unable to selectively breed rats for learning ability

false

Trematode pathogens of freshwater snails are more capable of infecting rare genotypes within the host population

false

Truncation selection involved exposing a population to a natural range of some environmental factor, without actually measuring individuals in the population

false

How does the garter snake-rough-skinned newt population relationship act as evidence for coevolution?

garter snakes have higher resistance to TTX in areas with higher newt TTX toxicity

"A larger beetle will need to dig a burrow in more stable soil" may lead to an example of:

genotype-environment correlation

Why is fossil bracketing necessary?

igneous rock is the only rock type which can be radiometrically dated

Sexual selection usually acts _____ natural selection because secondary characteristics are costly in some way (e.g long feathers of a peacock may interfere with camouflage or flying ability)

in opposition

What is r, the response to selection?

measured phenotypic evolution across one generation

A reaction norm describes the range of:

phenotypic plasticity

Why did the coat color of mice selected for high open-field behavior change?

pleiotropy

How can constraint hypothese be tested?

relax random genetic drift

What is the longest-running vertebrate selection experiment?

selection for increased body mass in mice

For a rodent in which the mother is the only provider of parental care(e.g nursing), we might expect offspring-on-mother regression for body size at weaning to have a _____ slope than offspring-on-father regression

steeper

How do we calculate a selection differential?

subtract the mean value of phenotype in breeding individuals from mean value for the whole population before selection occurred

What did the Miller & Urey experiment prove?

that early conditions on earth were capable of producing molecular elements of life

Why would the evolutionary trajectory of coevolution lead to stabilization of traits?

the cost of extreme traits begin to outweigh the benefits

Why is cytoplasmic male sterility called a "selfish trait"?

the mitochondria restrict overall reproduction while increasing mitochondrial gene spread

Which is true about the mass extinctions that have occured on Earth?

the number of species lost differed among mass extinctions

A trade-off in aspects of muscular performance could be caused by the differing contractile abilities of muscle fiber types

true

All optimality models assume some sort of trade-off; otherwise, bigger, better, more would always be the predicted best strategy

true

Current evidence suggests a monophyletic origin of life on earth

true

Darwin (1859) emphasized that rates of evolution were generally slow

true

Hamilton's rule states that for kin selection to occur, the benefit to the receiver weighted by the relatedness between the participants must be greater than the cost to the actor

true

In the Yanomamo of the Amazon, unokais(killers of other males)have higher reproductive success as compared with non-unokais

true

Observed evolutionary rates in darwin's decline in proportion to the time interval over which they are measured, and once you account for this time scaling, you do not need to invoke some special process for short versus long time scales relative to each other [T/f]

true

Producing eggs and raising offspring are relatively expensive. So, females tend to be "resource limited" with respect to their reproductive abilities & success

true

Selection experiments can be used to test hypotheses about constraints and trade-offs

true

Sexual selection may have caused the evolution of relatively large testes in some species of primates

true

The "Bauplan" refers to the fundamental body plan or set of characteristics of an organism. It imposes constraints on what is possible in terms of evolutionary outcomes. For example, spiders cannot evolve to be 100 feet in length [T/F]

true

The domestication of dogs and their subsequence development into many different breed can be considered under umbrella of selection experiments

true

The domestication of dogs seems to have been a 2-way street involving coevolutionary changes

true

The existence of an optimal clutch size follows from the typical trade-off between offspring number & resources available for each offspring [T/F]

true

The half-life of an element describes the set rate @ which an element radioactively decays

true

The only figure in The Origin of Species (1859) depicted what we would now call a phylogenetic tree, and it illustrated variable rates of evolution

true

Which of the following is an example of a life history allocation trade-off?

turtles in ponds with fewer predators reach sexual maturity at a later age, compared to turtles in high-predation ponds

What evidence suggests that faster flying in fruit flies does not reduce Darwinian fitness?

when selection was stopped, flying speed did not decrease

In general/,when are repeated reproductive periods favored?

when survival rates are high