Bio Final Exam

Human embryos have a developmental stage during which they have a tail and pharyngeal pouches (those pouches develop into gills in fish). How can we explain these characteristics of human embryos?

Human embryos share a common ancestor who had gills.

Which two observations led Darwin to conclude that there is competition for survival?

Overproduction of organisms and limited food resources

The respiratory system exchanges which gases?

Oxygen is inhaled, while carbon dioxide is exhaled.

Comparing the body structures of organisms to find evidence of a shared evolutionary history is called ________.

comparative anatomy

Maintaining a steady-state internal environment, despite a changing external environment, is called ________.

homeostasis

Individuals with variations that make them best suited to their environment are, on average, more likely to ________.

survive and reproduce

Due to differences in mating times, two sub-populations of frogs form into separate species, even though they occupy the same pond. This overall process is known as ________.

sympatric speciation

How long ago were the organisms that produced the oldest fossil records alive?

3.5 billion years ago

When did life first appear on the planet?

3.5 billion years ago

Which of the following is evidence for evolution in action?

All are evidence for evolution

The eastern meadowlark and the western meadowlark are two bird species that look very similar to each other. Why do biologists not consider them the same species?

All of the above

Which of the following are considered fossils?

All of the above are considered fossils

What is the leading hypothesis for what might have brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs?

An asteroid impact

Cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kohlrabi are all the same species of plant. What is responsible for the differences in these vegetables?

Artificial selection

What is an exception to the standard biological species concept used to define a species?

Asexual species cannot be distinguished using this concept.

What is the name for the study of the geographic distribution of species?

Biogeography

What events can lead to offspring having a unique arrangement of their parents' genes?

Both crossing over and independent assortment

Which of the following best defines microevolution?

Changes in genes within a population over time

What type of animal tissue contains blood, cartilage, and bone?

Connective

Which grouping includes all of the protists?

Domain Eukarya

Imagine that four people are infected with HIV from a common source (an infected blood sample). Initially, the patients' HIV populations are genetically identical. By the time they develop full-blown AIDS, how would the viral populations of the four patients compare?

Each patient's viral population would be unique, specifically adapted to deal with—and overcome—his or her unique immune system responses.

Some of the "branches" of a phylogenetic tree do not extend to the end. What do these lines represent?

Extinct species

How might global warming result in most grizzly bears having fur that is less dense in the future?

In any population of bears, some individuals have thick fur, some have thin fur, and some are in between. As temperatures increase with the passage of time, the survival of bears with thin fur will increase, and the number of bears in the population with thick fur will decrease.

In older classification schemes, the group called Reptilia was defined as consisting of lizards, turtles, and snakes. Birds were separated into the group called Aves. Why is Aves not a clade?

It does not include the reptiles.

Before Darwin published his work, Lamarck and others had suggested mechanisms for evolution. By what means did Darwin propose species evolved over time?

Natural selection

Match the correct structure with its correct tissue.

Neurons make up the nervous tissue.

Which process of evolution does not change the total number of species?

Nonbranching evolution

What is the correct hierarchy of organization, from biggest to smallest, in your body?

Organism, organ system, organ, tissue, cell

All prokaryotes are in the domain ________.

Prokaryotes are in different domains.

The domain Eukarya is divided into kingdoms. Which of these kingdoms includes members that are highly diverse and do not fit neatly into a single classification scheme?

Protists

Which of the following describe the integumentary system?

Skin, nails, hair

What field of science has as its goal to classify all living things into a hierarchical system of relatedness that runs from most broad to most narrow?

Taxonomy

Before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, what was the prevailing public consensus regarding species evolution?

That species were permanent and unchanging

The human immune system cannot effectively suppress the HIV virus on its own. What key feature of HIV makes it so hard to beat?

The HIV virus has an extremely high rate of mutation.

Which model of evolution is closest to what was originally suggested by Charles Darwin?

The graduated model matches best the reasoning of Charles Darwin.

What is radiometric dating?

The process of determining the age of a fossil from radioactive isotopes

A zombie apocalypse wipes out almost the entire human species before the zombie threat is eliminated. Only a group of 100 people who were at a family reunion on an uninhabited island survived. They returned to the mainland completely unaware of what had happened to everyone. Answer the following question(s) regarding the few survivors who now begin to rebuild the human population. Despite an abundance of habitat, why will it be difficult for the human species to recover?

The reduced genetic diversity will make it difficult for the population to adapt to new diseases or other environmental changes.

In many ways, a mule is a superior animal to the horse or donkey. Mules are often stronger and can jump higher than either of their parents. Why, then, are mules considered to be a "weak hybrid"?

They are sterile.

What is the main role of the peripheral nervous system?

To convey information to and from the central nervous system

Which medication prevents viral infections by priming the immune system against a specific virus?

Vaccines

What prompted Darwin to publish his book decades after he began writing it?

Wallace, a colleague, was about to publish a similar manuscript.

A requirement of cladistics is that a grouping must include ________.

a common ancestor and all its descendants

Natural selection is best described as _____.

a filtering process that fine-tunes the traits of populations by sorting among existing, randomly produced variations

Epithelial tissues covers ________.

all of the above

The cardiovascular system consists of ________.

all of the above

The blood, blood vessels, and heart in a human constitute __________.

an organ system

HIV has become an important source of mortality for humans. If AIDS persists as a major factor for humans for many generations in the future, natural selection theory predicts that _____.

any heritable traits that help humans survive and reproduce in the presence of AIDS should become more frequent over time

The approach that consists in comparing DNA sequences to find evidence of a shared evolutionary history is called ________.

bioinformatics

What is the main role of red blood cells?

carry oxygen

Evolution can be best defined as ________.

change in the gene pool of a population

Organs are made up of ________ to perform a specific function.

different types of tissues

Which classification grouping includes the greatest number of species?

domain

The modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s melded together Darwin's findings with ________.

genetics

Of those listed below, which category of classification is the most narrow?

genus

Natural selection acts on ________, and ________ evolve.

individuals; populations

A weed that exhibits resistance to an herbicide ________.

inherited the gene that made it resistant to the herbicide

The oldest fossils are typically found in the sediments ________.

located deep under the surface

Connective tissue is the most variable of the tissue types. Which one of the following is not categorized as connective tissue?

muscle

Can you inherit physical traits that your parents acquired during their lifetime?

no

In the Grand Canyon, fossils in rock layers at the bottom of the canyon are __________ than those in layers closer to the top.

older

The slow drifting of sections of the earth's crust, sometimes separating, other times colliding, is known as ________.

plate tectonics

What is the smallest unit that can evolve?

population

Tissues are made up of ________ that work together to perform a function.

similar cells

If two organisms of different species share more similar DNA sequences with each other than with other species, we can conclude that ________.

these two species are very closely related

What term describes the failure of one species' sperm to fertilize the egg of a different species?

Gametic incompatibility

Habitat loss has driven the population of the Florida panther (Puma concolor cougar) to extremely low numbers. Which mechanism of microevolution is likely at play in this species?

Genetic drift: the bottleneck effect

Which of the following most often leads to allopatric speciation?

Habitat isolation

What contribution did Charles Lyell make?

He provided the first evidence that the Earth is much older than was previously thought.

What is the role of the epithelium?

Helps protect the body from the external environment

As proposed by Darwin, what sorts of traits are favored by natural selection?

Heritable traits that help individuals survive and reproduce more successfully than others in the same population.

What does fitness mean when speaking in terms of evolution?

How many offspring an individual produces

How did Darwin's ideas on evolution conflict with contemporary religious dogma?

In contrast to biblical teaching, Darwin argued that the earth was very old, and that species are constantly changing.

What defines a population in evolution?

Interbreeding members of the same species

A zombie apocalypse wipes out almost the entire human species before the zombie threat is eliminated. Only a group of 100 people who were at a family reunion on an uninhabited island survived. They returned to the mainland completely unaware of what had happened to everyone. Answer the following question(s) regarding the few survivors who now begin to rebuild the human population. Certain traits will have been lost from the gene pool forever. This loss of diversity in a reduced population is called ________.

bottleneck effect

The rapid diversification of species seen in the fossil record followed by long periods of stasis is part of the ________ model of evolution.

punctuated equilibrium