Download Bio 10: Introductory Biology Lecture Exam 4 Study Guide

Bio 10: Introductory Biology
Lecture Exam 4 Study Guide
Fall 2012
Dana Nakase
Instructions
These questions are meant to direct your study and orient your thinking, not to give you a direct
preview of the questions you will see on the exam. If you understand the ideas, concepts, and
processes on the study guide, however, you should do well on the exam. If there is something
you don’t understand, come ask me during office hours or make an appointment!
Unit 4: Natural Selection
Chapters 13 and 14
What is a nested hierarchy of traits? Why do tigers and fish share a few general traits while
tigers and lions share many specific traits?
What are vestigial traits? What are homologous structures? What is biogeography? What are
analogous traits? Can you explain these observations with Darwin’s theory of evolution by
natural selection?
What is the theory of uniformitarianism? How was it important to the development of the theory
of evolution?
What two traits do all organisms share?
What is biological evolution? At what level does evolution occur, the individual, the population
or the ecosystem?
Briefly summarize the ideas or contribution of Thomas Malthus to Darwin’s theory of evolution
by natural selection.
What is natural selection? What is required for natural selection to occur?
Variation is important for evolution, because it provides the fitness differences upon which
natural selection operates. Where does variation within a population come from?
What makes an individual ‘evolutionarily fit’?
Using Darwin’s proposals for how evolution occurs, provide an scenario to explain how cheetahs
evolved the ability to be able to run up to 75 miles per hour.
Imagine two populations of a single species separated by Imposition of some geographic barrier
(e.g. a wide river). Make a graph with time on the x-axis and on the y-axis is plotted the number
of traits in which the two populations differ from each other. Include time = 0 as the time when
the isolation is first imposed. What does the graph look like?
In the representative sample of a population of Agathidium beetles below, one is slightly smaller
and lighter in color than the others. These features make it a little better at evading predators and
increase the chances, relative to others in the population, that it will survive long enough to
reproduce. What is likely to happen to the representation of the smaller, lighter beetle in the
overall population over time? Will the ration remain at roughly 6:1, or will it change? If it
changes, why will it change, and in what direction? And finally, what relationship, if any, does
the process of change you describe have to evolution by natural selection? To adaptation? To
speciation?
What is genetic drift? What is the bottleneck effect? How do these cause evolution? How are
they different than natural selection?
What is a species? How do new species arise? What factors are important in speciation?
In class we discussed some prominent challenges to evolutionary theory: the argument from
design and the argument from irreducible complexity. How do each of these arguments go, and
what are some possible responses?
There is an ongoing debate in the U.S. about the teaching of evolution and creationism in the
public schools. One criticism that is raised by those in favor of teaching creationism is that
evolution is “just a theory”. What is the flaw with that argument?