ANTH 5 - Practice Midterm

Anolis carolinensis: Select one: a. evolved a different foot anatomy only when it occurred on the same islands as Anolis sagrei. b. regularly hunt their prey on the ground. c. do not inherit their mother's foot anatomy. d. are dominant to Anolis sagrei. e. All of the above are true.

A

Disabling mutations in olfactory receptor genes: Select one: a. are more likely to spread in species with excellent visual systems. b. would always be favored by selection, in any mammal. c. would always be disfavored; a mutation that disables any system is bad. d. are more common in lemurs than in humans. e. None of the above is correct.

A

Hamilton's Rule: Select one: a. Shows how a gene can spread even if it consistently inflicts evolutionary costs on the individuals who have it. b. Is mathematically defined as b+c=r/z. c. Suggests that family members will be unlikely to aid each other. d. Was proposed to explain cooperative behavior. e. All of the above are correct.

A

Natural selection favors reciprocal altruism: Select one: a. only if it's possible to withhold benefits from non-reciprocators. b. when (b+c) > (r/z). c. kin live near each other. d. because altruism is always favored over selfishness. e. only if the population is very fluid and most pairs of individuals meet and interact only once.

A

To spread via natural selection: Select one: a. entities need to copy themselves quite precisely. b. traits need to promote survival. c. individuals need to live a long time. d. the entities must be genes. e. None of the above is correct.

A

Why must all scientific theories be uniformitarian? Select one: a. Because they cannot be tested if they are not uniformitarian. b. Because scientific change is gradual. c. Because matter and energy are always conserved. d. Because genes are potentially immortal. e. Scientific theories generally need to be uniformitarian but biological theories do not have to be.

A

Both kin selection and reciprocity: Select one: a. are theories developed to explain the evolution of cooperation. b. show how phenotypic altruism can be genetic selfishness. c. concern mate choice (how mothers and fathers pair up). d. were first proposed by Charles Darwin. e. none of the above is correct.

B

Heritability: Select one: a. measures the extent to which offspring resemble their parents. b. is a ratio of variances. c. is large only when Ve is large. d. of blood type is low. e. none of the above is correct.

B

Human skin color: Select one: a. varies randomly across the planet. b. is shaped by two opposing selecting pressures. c. primarily serves a camouflage function. d. shows no environmental responsiveness. e. All of the above are correct.

B

If you mated a homozygote recessive (say, tt) with a heterozygote (Tt): Select one: a. all the offspring would express the dominant phenotype. b. you would expect a 1:1 ratio of phenotypes among their offspring. c. you would see Mendel's famous 3:1 phenotype ratio. d. the phenotypes are unpredictable from the data given. e. selection would disfavor the offspring of this mating and it shouldn't happen often.

B

In the study of the Mediterranean lizards by Anthony Herrel and his associates: Select one: a. the same selection pressures were operating on the two islands. b. different diets favored different adaptations. c. developmental effects were assessed. d. we see that evolutionary adaptation cannot be observed in a mere human lifetime. e. None of the above is correct.

B

Kin selection theory: Select one: a. explains why we would prefer to choose our kin rather than get stuck with the ones we have. b. can explain why selfishness is sometimes restrained. c. concerns mate choice (how mothers and fathers pair up). d. was developed to explain adaptation, but turned out to better explain mutation. e. can only work where b = c.

B

Mutations: Select one: a. Are produced by natural selection to promote the survival of the species. b. Are usually harmful because they are random changes in a recipe that has previously passed the filter of natural selection. c. Are not a key element of modern evolutionary theory because they are just random mistakes, and random mistakes never do anything interesting. d. Remove genetic variation from the population. e. None of the above is correct.

B

Natural selection: a. happens because reproductive success is random. b. can occur only if offspring resemble their parents. c. cannot be observed because we don't live long enough to see any change. d. can occur in populations where there is no biological variation. e. All of the above are true.

B

As defined and understood by biologists, the trait of altruism: Select one: a. Should be widespread because it's good for the species. b. Is any case where both parties derive a benefit; it's the same as cooperation. c. Is a major puzzle and its evolution requires additions to Darwin's theory. d. Is common in humans (because we have culture) but is absent in other species (because they lack culture). e. All but C are correct.

C

Reciprocal altruism and kin-selected altruism: Select one: a. Are both equally common in humans and non-human animals. b. Both depend on a high degree of relatedness between the altruist and the recipient of the altruism. c. Both depend on B > C. d. Both predict incriminate altruism. e. All but C are correct.

C

The function of any biological trait: Select one: a. Is usually an unsolvable mystery; we know that selection favored it, but we seldom know why. b. Is always to promote the survival of the species. c. Can often be deduced by examining its detailed structure and operation. d. Is seldom revealed by asking what species have the trait. e. None of the above is correct.

C

What is a sexually antagonistic gene? Select one: a. one that induces males to fight over females. b. one that causes arguments between spouses. c. one that has opposite effects on the fitness of males and females. d. any gene on the X-chromosome. e. None of the above is correct.

C

What is the core problem of biology? a. Why some animals are big and some are small. b. How heredity works. c. Why each kind of organism fits so well with its environment. d. Why there are two sexes. e. Biology doesn't have a central problem that is separate from the central problem of the other sciences.

C

What is the lesson of Fisher's microscope analogy? Select one: a. Eyes could be better than they are. b. To understand evolution you have to look at very small things. c. Mutations that have small effects on the phenotype have the best chance of being helpful. d. Very small dogs and very big dogs are members of different species. e. None of the above is correct.

C

What is true about base-pairing rules? Select one: a. They explain why some alleles are dominant to others. b. They prevent DNA from influencing RNA. c. They allow DNA to make very accurate copies of itself. d. They work differently in males and females. e. They work differently in parents and offspring.

C

Which of the following is correct? Select one: a. Evolution by natural selection created life as we know it but isn't happening now. b. Unfortunately we can't do evolutionary experiments. c. Evolution happens at the pace of generations. d. Antibiotics do kill bacteria but don't affect their evolution. e. None of the above is correct.

C

A modern understanding of evolution and genetics suggests that: Select one: a. genes shape all aspects of an individual's phenotype with little scope for environmental influences. b. the environment shapes all aspects of an individual's phenotype with little scope for genetic influences. c. For any individual, say John, we can say how much of his phenotype is due to genes and how much is due to environment. d. There are two nature/nurture questions, only one of which is answerable. e. None of the above is correct.

D

Any "proportionate Punnett Square" (slide 24 in Lecture 6): Select one: a. Shows why blending inheritance is false. b. Demonstrates that the famous 3:1 ratios depend on mothers contributing more genes than fathers. c. Demonstrates that facultative adaptations are impossible in diploid species. d. Shows (in the absence of selection) the expected offspring genotype frequencies for any given set of parental allele frequencies. e. All of the above are correct.

D

The production of sex cells: Select one: a. begins with a haploid parent cell and ends with a diploid egg or sperm. b. in humans, results in females being diploid and males being haploid. c. results in each individual giving either its father's or its mother's genes to any particular offspring. d. depends on the members of a species sharing the same locus map. e. None of the above is true.

D

What seems to be driving the evolution of finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands? Select one: a. temperature. b. sea-level rise. c. migration from mainland South America. d. the effects of El Niño and La Niña on seed availability. e. Finch beaks are not evolving in the Galapagos because the island populations are too small.

D

Which is correct about convergence? Select one: a. Convergence occurs when different populations evolve different adaptations. b. Convergence occurs when different populations experience similar mutations. c. Convergence occurs when different populations evolve similar adaptations. d. Convergence occurs when different populations evolve similar adaptations because they experience similar selection pressures. e. Convergence is not evolutionarily interesting because, like mutation, it's random.

D

Which of the following is an important element of Mendel's model of heredity? Select one: a. Genes behave more like fluids than like particles. b. Parents give all of their genes to each of their offspring. c. Reproduction has the potential to be exponential. d. Some genes are unexpressed unless an individual has two copies. e. None of the above is correct.

D

Which of these predictions makes sense in terms of what you learned in this chapter? Select one: a. High-latitude human populations, living far from the equator, should have high levels of melanin synthesis. b. Albinos should suffer greatly from vitamin D deficiency. c. If we could accurately reconstruct the diet of ancestral humans we'd find that they were eating foods that contained a lot of vitamin D. d. African Americans should have lower skin cancer rates than Americans of European ancestry. e. None of the above is correct.

D

Facultative adaptations: Select one: a. Are designed by selection to address short-term environmental variation that affects fitness. b. Are genetically programmed response patterns. c. Will typically fail outside the historical range of environmental variation. d. in humans, can address variation in the amount of atmospheric oxygen (as a function of elevation above sea level) but not variation in the amount of atmospheric carbon monoxide (resulting from the burning of fossil fuels). e. All of the above are correct.

E

The formation of new species: Select one: a. Concerns the origins of reproductive isolation. b. Often depends of a physical barrier to gene flow between two subpopulations. c. Is typically gradual. d. Is usefully illustrated by ring species. e. All of the above are correct.

E

Vp, the population variability (variance) in a trait: Select one: a. simply measures how much difference there is among the individuals in the population. b. other things equal, will be larger if Vg is large. c. other things equal, will be larger if Ve is large. d. is the sum of both genetic and environmental influences. e. All of the above are correct.

E

Which of the following is correct? Select one: a. The average human has 3,000,000,000 genes. b. Every change in a codon will produce a corresponding amino acid change. c. The DNA sequence of a typical randomly selected pair of humans will be about 80% identical. d. Ribosomes translate DNA into RNA. e. Natural selection discriminates among the phenotypic effects of alternative alleles.

E