KEY FOR QUIZ 2:
BASICS OF NATURAL SELECTION
Topic # 3035
By Jonathan Edgerly
1) Who is considered to be the father of natural selection?
Darwin
2) This person had four principles that he based his theories on. What were they?
 Organisms are constantly changing
 All organisms are derived from common ancestors through
branching.
 Change is gradual and occurs over a long period of time.
 Natural selection is the mechanism for evolution
3) What does natural selection lead to?
Evolution
4) Give two reasons why natural selection is important to maintain a population?
 Population control
 Genetic variability
 Be able to cope with environmental changes
5) Describe how the example of morphological change in moths in England in the
early 1800’s is a realization of natural selection?
During the early 1800’s England went through an industrial revolution.
This industrial revolution led to a great deal of pollution in the
environment. The silt in the air blackened the bark of the trees turning the
bark from a whitish color to almost black. Before this revolution the moth
population was almost entirely white with a few odd black individuals.
After the effects of the pollution the population of moths had turned the
opposite. The population of black moths became the dominant in number
and the white moths were few and far between. This change in dominant
phenotype of a population is an example of a population’s response to
environmental change due to natural selection leading to evolution.
6) Natural selection occurs over?
1 generation
100 generations
several generations
7) Give an example of evolution in an organism?
The answer could be just about anything where the student provides a real
life example of how an organism has evolved to adapt to some sort of
environmental change. This will be more teacher-specific probably
relating to examples used in class.