ANTH 5 Quizzes

What is the lesson of Fisher's microscope analogy?

Mutations that have small effects on the phenotype have the best chance of being helpful.

Why must all scientific theories be uniformitarian?

Because they cannot be tested if they are not uniformitarian.

Mutations

Are usually harmful because they are random changes in a recipe that has previously passed the filter of natural selection.

Reciprocal altruism and kin-selected altruism:

Both depend on B > C.

The function of any biological trait: 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.

Can often be deduced by examining its detailed structure and operation.

Which of the following is correct? 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.

Natural selection discriminates among the phenotypic effects of alternative alleles.

Which of the following is correct about human language: a. Human groups with simpler technologies, like the San you saw in "The Hunters" film, also have simpler languages. b. Humans seem to lack specialized adaptations for spoken language. c. Language learning depends on overall intelligence. d. Human language and the communication systems of other animals have similar structure and organization. e. None of the above is correct.

None of the above is correct.

What is true about base-pairing rules?

They allow DNA to make very accurate copies of itself.

Which of the following is correct? a. The earliest hominins have a wide array of derived human-like traits. b. Bipedality would require skeletal changes for a mammal, but those changes are limited to the hips and hind-limbs. c. The earliest candidate hominins had small brains, no larger than the brains of modern chimpanzees. d. Because of their large size, gorillas are clearly the closest living relative of modern humans. e. All of the above are correct. No; only one is.

a. The earliest hominins have a wide array of derived human-like traits. b. Bipedality would require skeletal changes for a mammal, but those changes are limited to the hips and hind-limbs. c. The earliest candidate hominins had small brains, no larger than the brains of modern chimpanzees. d. Because of their large size, gorillas are clearly the closest living relative of modern humans. e. All of the above are correct. No; only one is.

What is the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (the EEA)?

a. The environment in which the adaptation of interest was built by natural selection. Good.

Primitive traits:

a. are useless for classifying organisms. b. are present only in unicellular organisms. c. are rapidly weeded out by selection. d. are the ones that are absent in the "outgroup". e. Occur later in development.

Homo sapiens sapiens:

a. is the subspecies to which all living humans belong.

Alleles are more likely to be linked if:

a. they have been subject to fewer generations of recombination. Good.

All hominins:

are bipedal apes.

Disabling mutations in olfactory receptor genes:

are more likely to spread in species with excellent visual systems.

Which of the following is correct? 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. Evolution happens at the pace of generations.

Broca's area:

c. Is a part of the human brain involved with speech production.

Which of the following is correct? a. Paranthropus is the most likely ancestor of Homo. b. It will be easy to differentiate australopiths from early Homo, since they are different genera. c. The brain size of hominins increased rather slowly until about 2 MYA. Good. d. Australopith males and females were about as different as men and women are today. e. All of the above are correct.

c. The brain size of hominins increased rather slowly until about 2 MYA. Good.

Kin selection theory:

can explain why selfishness is sometimes restrained.

Natural selection:

can occur only if offspring resemble their parents.

Human skin color:

is shaped by two opposing selecting pressures.

Extensive paternal investment in offspring:

may be a consequence of two separate human adaptations: bipedality and a large brain.

Natural selection favors reciprocal altruism:

only if it's possible to withhold benefits from non-reciprocators.

Both kin selection and reciprocity:

show how phenotypic altruism can be genetic selfishness.

What seems to be driving the evolution of finch beaks in the Galapagos Islands?

the effects of El Niño and La Niña on seed availability.

If you mated a homozygote recessive (say, tt) with a heterozygote (Tt):

you would expect a 1:1 ratio of phenotypes among their offspring.

Any "proportionate Punnett Square" (slide 24 in Lecture 6):

Shows (in the absence of selection) the expected offspring genotype frequencies for any given set of parental allele frequencies.

Hamilton's Rule:

Shows how a gene can spread even if it consistently inflicts evolutionary costs on the individuals who have it.

Which of the following is an important element of Mendel's model of heredity?

Some genes are unexpressed unless an individual has two copies.

Anolis carolinensis:

evolved a different foot anatomy only when it occurred on the same islands as Anolis sagrei.

Hominins

evolved during a period when their environment was cooling and drying significantly.

Why hasn't natural selection yet perfected human adaptations? a. Selection favors alleles that are good at getting into the next generation, not necessarily alleles that are good for individuals. b. Selection is also working to improve the adaptations of many of our (parasite and pathogen) enemies, which help them defeat our adaptations. c. When the risks of false-positive and false-negative errors are asymmetrical, selection often designs our defenses to be hyper-sensitive. d. Adaptations often don't work in a novel environment and humans actively change their environment. e. All of the above are correct.

. All of the above are correct. Great!

Which of these predictions makes sense in terms of what you learned in this chapter? 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. Good e. None of the above is correct.

African Americans should have lower skin cancer rates than Americans of European ancestry.

Biological (cladistic) classification: a. is hierarchical. b. should be based on phylogeny. c. should ignore some kinds of similarities. d. should not be based primarily on convergent traits. e. All of the above are correct.

All of the above are correct.

Facultative adaptations: 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.

All of the above are correct.

Which is correct about convergence?

Convergence occurs when different populations evolve similar adaptations because they experience similar selection pressures.

How did the gradually evolving ecology of early Homo differ from that of modern chimpanzees?

Homo's diet relied on more widely dispersed foods

As defined and understood by biologists, the trait of altruism:

Is a major puzzle and its evolution requires additions to Darwin's theory.

Which of the following is correct? . The diet in most developed countries includes too much of all kinds of fat. b. Today we encounter strangers far more frequently than our ancestors did. c. Our parasites and pathogens evolve at the same rate as we do. d. Selection will design organisms with adaptations that anticipate and respond helpfully to novel environments. e. All of the above are correct.

Today we encounter strangers far more frequently than our ancestors did.

What is the core problem of biology?

Why each kind of organism fits so well with its environment

Which is correct? a. The modern "races" have deep evolutionary roots; for example modern Asians are descended from populations that have been in Asia for at least one million years. b. Hominins aren't found outside of Africa until about 1.8 MYA. c. By 500,000 years ago there was only a single species of hominin alive. d. To do cladistic analysis it would be helpful if we could extract DNA from fossils, but unfortunately that's impossible because DNA is too unstable. e. All of the above are correct.

b. Hominins aren't found outside of Africa until about 1.8 MYA.

Which of the following is correct? a. Biological classification is just like classifying anything, such as books or architectural styles. b. Organisms that share derived traits should be grouped together. c. Outgroup comparison is the same as the comparative method used to deduce the function of evolved traits. d. The fossil record is the only source of information about what traits are primitive. e. All of the above are correct.

b. Organisms that share derived traits should be grouped together.

In the study of the Mediterranean lizards by Anthony Herrel and his associates:

b. different diets favored different adaptations.

Australopiths (members of the genus Australopithecus and the genus Paranthropus):

b. were clearly bipedal.

The production of sex cells:

begins with a haploid parent cell and ends with a diploid egg or sperm.

Genetic linkage measures:

d. How frequently a specified pair of alleles co-occur in the same individual, compared to how often they would be expected to co-occur given their individual frequencies in the population. Good.

The first members of the genus Homo:

d. appeared in the fossil record about 1.8 MYA, as do Acheulean tools. Good.

Phonemes:

d. are combined to make morphemes. Good.

Genes

differ from each other in their base sequences.

The formation of new species: 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. All of the above are correct. Yes!

Evidence suggests that early Homo ate more meat than modern chimpanzees do. What might have been some consequences of this shift to more meat eating? . more opportunities for reciprocity. b. a higher quality diet allowing increased investment in a larger brain c. more easily digested foods, allowing a reduced investment in the digestive system. d. longer travel in search of food. e. All of the above are plausible consequences.

e. All of the above are plausible consequences.

Tool use: a. is a derived trait of hominins not present in the other apes. b. is unfortunately something we can't observe in the fossil/archaeological record. c. is evident in the fossil/archaeological record, but only with the emergence of genus Homo. d. traditions (or "technologies") changed very rapidly during early hominin evolution. e. None of the above is correct.

e. None of the above is correct.

Which of the following is correct? a. To know what has been spread recently by natural selection we only have to know what alleles are currently at high frequency in the population. b. Many genes favored by recent selection provide resistance to disease. c. Generation by generation recombination lengthens haplotypes. d. Neanderthal genes provided no fitness benefits to Homo sapiens sapiens. e. None of the above is correct.

e. None of the above is correct.

To spread via natural selection:

entities need to copy themselves quite precisely.