Florida International University

BIO 3063

Studyguide/Worksheet – Unit 9: Evolution and Origin of the Species

18.1 - Understanding Evolution

1)Evolution by natural selection describes what?

2. What were the ideas proposed by James Hutton?
3. What were Charles Lyell’s ideas?
4. What was the mechanism for evolutionary change detailed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck?

5. Are his ideas still accepted?

6. Who were the two naturalists who independently conceived and described the actual mechanism for evolution?
7. What expeditions did these two naturalists participate in?
8. While on the Galapagos Islands, observed what?
9. What did he observe in ground finches on the different islands?
10. What did Darwin postulate about the beak of the finches?

11. What did Darwin call the mechanism for change?
12. What is natural selection, or the survival of the fittest?

13. Darwin argued that natural selection was an inevitable outcome of what 3 principles that operated in nature?

14. Where did Darwin and Wallace gain their understanding of how the “capacity for reproduction in all organisms outstrips the availability of resources to support their numbers”?
15. What concept was the foundation for what Darwin called “descent with modification”?
16. What support for natural selection were Peter and Rosemary Grant able to demonstrate?
17. Natural selection can only take place if there is what?
18. How can variation among individuals be caused by non-genetic reasons?
19. Genetic diversity in a population comes from what two main mechanisms?
20. Which is the ultimate source of new alleles?
21. What are the 3 potential outcomes on the phenotype from genetic changes caused by mutation?

22. How does sexual reproduction lead to genetic diversity?
23. What is an adaptation?
24. How do scientists describe groups of organisms becoming adapted to their environment?
25. What determines whether or not a trait is favorable?
26. What is divergent evolution?
27. How has divergent evolution impacted the forms of the reproductive organs of flowering plants?
28. What is convergent evolution?
29. What is the time frame for the effects of natural selection on individuals and on the genotypes of an entire species?
30. What role do fossils play in supporting the theory of evolution?
31. What are homologous structures? What do they indicate?
32. What are vestigial structures?
33. What does the convergence of forms indicate?

34. What is Embryology?
35. What does it mean when we say embryo formation tends to be conserved?
36. All vertebrate embryos, including humans, exhibit what?
37. The study of biogeography is what?
38. Why does Australia have an abundance of endemic species?
39. How do the structures of the molecules of life reflect descent with modification?
40. Fundamental divisions in life between the three domains are reflected in major structural differences in otherwise conservative structures such as what?
41. The evolution of new functions for proteins commonly occurs after what?
42. What is the issue with saying “evolution is just a theory”?
43. Evolution is the change in the genetic composition of what over time?