BIOS 1710
SI WORKSHEET 28
SI Leader: Helene Shai
9 Nov 2014
Exam Three (Monday, November 10) Prep: Finishing up Chapter 24
* Be sure that you do the study questions and applications on pages 524 and 525 for Ch 24.
Exam Breakdown:
Chapter 1: pages 1-2 through 1-8, 1-12 through 1-15
Chapter 21: all pages
Chapter 22: all pages
Chapter 23: pages 23-1 through 23-11, 23-19 through 23-20
*Know how fossils complement phylogenies but do not learn the details of
fossils found on 11-19
Chapter 24: all pages
*Do not memorize the names of the fossil humans (except for Neanderthal)
and ages/places where these fossils were living
1. Biologists claim that both populations and species evolve. I can understand this concept
at the population level but would a geographically widespread species, for example,
White-tailed Deer, having millions of individuals at any one point in time actually evolve
as a single unit? Explain and defend your answer.
2. Natural selection acts on individual organisms but can individuals evolve? Explain.
3. Why must adaptations have a genetic basis? Explain.
4. Are mammals more advanced evolutionarily than amphibians or reptiles? Explain.
5. Define, compare and contrast structural, developmental and genetic homologies.
6. How do we know that the bones supporting a bird wing are homologous with the
forearm bones of a person?
7. Why do dolphins and ichthyosaurs appear to be the same type of animal?
8. Why are most pathogenic bacteria that cause human disease and infections resistant to
penicillin (the earliest antibiotic used in medicine)?
9. How can we prevent this (or at least minimize) from happening with new generations
of antibiotics?
10. What is wrong with the concept of a ladder of progressively more complex phyla of
organisms?
11. Natural selection is not the only process that causes evolution to occur. Identify,
compare and contrast the other mechanisms.
12. Why is the Hardy-Weinberg Principle (HWP) so important in evolutionary studies?
13. If the HWP null hypothesis is statistically rejected, then what is likely happening in that
population?
14. Why is the bell-shaped curve (the normal distribution) an important statistical tool
when studying the evolution of populations?
15. Darwin’s first book “Origin of Species” dealt with the concept of Natural Selection then
many years later he wrote a two-volume book on Human Evolution and Sexual
Selection. Why is sexual selection different and of keen interest to evolutionary
biologists?
16. Define evolutionary fitness; how is it measured?
17. Individuals of some animal species can have very low reproductive rates but high
evolutionary fitness. How can that happen?
18. Speculate on population bottlenecks that have impacted the evolution of human
populations during the past 20,000 years. Give several examples.
19. Are all mutations bad? Explain.
20. Some societies do not allow first cousins to marry but others tolerate or ignore this rule.
When would it be especially important to heed the warning about inbreeding, and
under what circumstances could people ignore the warning?
21. Which definition of a species would a paleontologist (for example, my research) apply?
Why? How accurate do you think it would be?
22. What is the most common mechanism of reproductive isolation of species? Why?
23. Are there reproductive isolating mechanisms between subspecies?
24. Define, compare and contrast prezygotic and postzygotic reproductive isolating
mechanisms.
25. Geographic isolation of populations can take place in several ways: describe them.
26. What is inherently interesting about hybrid zones?
27. How genetically different are the traditional races of humans?
28. How is a phylogenetic tree or cladogram constructed? What assumptions are being
made?
29. Compare and contrast monophyly, paraphyly and polyphyly. Give examples.
30. Where did the atmospheric oxygen come from, since it wasn’t there when life began on
earth?
31. Describe the “molecular clock” and how it is used in evolutionary studies? What are
some shortcomings of the molecular clock?
32. The Ediacaran and Burgess Shale Faunas are very important. Why?
33. What is an adaptive radiation? Why does one occur?
34. What is the new field of “evo-devo?” Why is it so exciting?
35. Why is the phenomenon of epigenetics of interest to biology? How can it be applied in
evolutionary studies?
36. Orangutans and Humans share several characteristics that are not found in gorillas,
chimps and bonobos. For example, a unique enamel molecule on our teeth, the
forehead lacks hair, the hair on head combs forward instead of backward, the
Anogenital tumescence during ovulatory cycle absent, , and the mammary gland/nipple
distance between right and left gland as a percentage of chest breadth 70-90% instead
of less than 50% and so on. Why? How is this explained?
37. What are homeotic or Hox genes?
38. Why are the same Hox genes found in different animal species from flies to chickens to
snakes?
39. How can two species have nearly the same set of genes but look so very different, i.e. the
phenotypes are very different?
40. What is evo-devo and why is this area of research so very important to evolutionary
biology especially when studying the biodiversity of life and the evolution of new
adaptations?
41. On page 449 there are 5 paragraphs in the summary; understand and apply #5.
42. Understand what epigenetic heritance is, and its impact on studying population
variation and adaptation in an evolutionary framework.
43. Discuss the following important people and what they have contributed: Aristotle,
Darwin, Wallace, Mendel, Lyell, Malthus, Linnaeus, Lamarck, Kammerer.
44. Darwin did not like the word “evolution”; what did he write instead in his 1859 book
‘On the Origin of Species’ by means of natural selection?
45. Why do the frequent occurrences of vestigial traits refute the notion of creationism as
an explanation for the biodiversity of life?
46. What is the difference between genetic homology and morphological homology? Why
should they be interlinked or correlated positively?
47. What are the four postulates of natural selection as understood and presented by
Darwin? (p. 490)
48. The theory of evolution can be divided into 5 separate theories, which are? (See
handout from day 1 and posted under Syllabus on Blackboard)