Answer all the Learning Objectives listed on this study guide. Each answer should be about a paragraph long or have a detailed diagram drawn by you.
Make sure you answer each objective using your own words. On one hand this is to avoid plagiarism, but more importantly, when you can explain something with your own words you really understand it.
Questions:
Chapter 19: Descent with modification
- Evaluate whether what we know about genetics supports Lamark’s theory of evolution
- Describe the evidence about evolution and Natural Selection available at Darwin’s time and now
- Explain the observations that Darwin made and the conclusions that he reached from that evidence.
- Explain natural selection, artificial selection, convergent evolution and homologous structures
- Describe the scientific evidence supporting evolution by Natural Selection
Chapter 21: Evolution of populations
- Explain the importance of genetic variation in a population
- What does it mean for a population to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium
- Explain how the Hardy-Weinberg equation allows to find evidence of evolution
- Describe the five processes that change the genetic composition of populations
- Define fitness in evolutionary terms
- Define frequency-dependent selection, oscillating selection, and heterozygous advantage and how they affect the genetic composition of population
Chapter 22: Origin of Species
- Explain how are species defined under the biological species concept
- Explain the problems with the biological species concept and how an ecological species concept can be more useful in some cases
- Describe the kinds of reproductive isolation and give examples of each.
- Explain the mechanisms that can lead to speciation
- Compare allopatric and sympatric speciation, what mechanisms are at play in each?
- Apply the concepts of speciation to identify what possible processes may have led to speciation in a case study
- Identify the type of selection taking place in a case study
Ch. 16 section: 16.1
- Formulate the relationship between cell division, development & gene expression
Ch. 18 sections: 18.3, Fig. 18.5, 18.5, 18.6
- Explain what genome variation tell us about evolution
- Explain how duplication, rearrangement and mutations contribute to evolution
- Explain the connection between genes, embryonic development and evolution
Ch. 23 sections: 23.3, 23.4
- Explain how small changes in developmental genes can produce large changes in body form
- Explain what do we mean by ‘evolution is not goal oriented’
Chapter 20: Secs. 20.1 & 20.3
- Define what a phylogeny represents
- Given a phylogenetic tree, explain if the trait is a homology or an analogy
- Given a phylogenetic tree, identify where in the tree a given trait may have first appeared
- Locate within a phylogeny the most recent common ancestor of a group
- Use the concept of parsimony to infer the evolution of traits