Evolution

Question 1

What is taxonomy?

Answer 1

A way to understand how organisms are related and a way to organise and categorise based on common descent

Question 2

What is the classification system?

Answer 2

Kingdom 
Phylum
Class
Order 
Family
Genus 
Species

Question 3

What are splitters?

Answer 3

If they can’t tell two animals apart will put them in different species

Question 4

What are high levels of synonymy associated with?

Answer 4

High levels of morphological variability

Large geographical ranges

Question 5

What are the five kingdoms?

Answer 5

Animal
Plant
Protist
Fungi
Monera

Question 6

How do heterotrophs get food?

Answer 6

Absorption, ingestion and digestion

Question 7

How do autotrophs get food?

Answer 7

Make it via photosynthesis

Question 8

What is microevolution?

Answer 8

Change in allele frequency over generations, associated phenotypic changes and changes within species

Question 9

What’s macroevolution?

Answer 9

Changes above species level eg speciation

Or the emergence of flight

Question 10

What is descent with modification ?

Answer 10

Descent from a common ancestor

Adaption to environment generating diversity and adaptedness

Question 11

What’s artificial selection?

Answer 11

Humans creating an environment to favour selected traits

Question 12

What did Malthus believe?

Answer 12

Most of human suffering due to limited resources

Question 13

Factors of natural selection

Answer 13

Environment imposed challenges for survival/reproduction
Variation 
Best genes move on to next generation 
Not random 
Selection biased

Question 14

What is fitness?

Answer 14

Potential for reproductive success, producing young that survive to breed themselves

Question 15

What’s special about the Nara nettles?

Answer 15

Have more stinging leaves to defend against deer

Question 16

What happened to Galapagos finches after a drought?

Answer 16

Bill morphology

Larger seeds left so birds with larger bills selected for

Question 17

What’s sexual selection?

Answer 17

Where various factors like avoiding predation, outcompeting rivals and ability to find food influence reproductive success

Question 18

What’s Batemans principle?

Answer 18

Males must compete to mate with females, females are choosy and select the higher quality male

Question 19

What does females choose males for?

Answer 19

Strongest
Resistant of disease
Those that will provide ‘sexy sons’ - reproductive success is higher

Question 20

Males advertise via?

Answer 20

male ornaments, contests
nupital gifts
prolonged courtship
honest advertising of quality

Question 21

what are male secondary sex characteristics?

Answer 21

sexual dimorphic, appear following maturity

sexually selected - males where these traits are more pronounced leave more offspring

Question 22

whats runaway sexual selection?

Answer 22

explains the elaborate and costly male ornaments, positive feedback
strong enough female preference can counter natural selection

Question 23

what do honest signals advertise?

Answer 23

strength, vigour = fitness

Question 24

what is the benefit of females mating with multiple males?

Answer 24

choice, sperm will be in competition with each other to fertilize the egg

Question 25

how can females choose sperm?

Answer 25

increase likelihood of a certain sperm, slowing or killing non-preferred sperm e.g close relatives can help best choice fertilize the egg

Question 26

what is sexual selection?

Answer 26

those that have greatest fitness will survive to reproduce and mate, greater attraction, greater likelihood of getting the mate

Question 27

how can we study natural selection?

Answer 27

make predictions about evolutionary responses

Question 28

why are guppies important?

Answer 28

model organism in evolutionary ecology

Question 29

why do guppies have colourful markings or not?

Answer 29

predation - if predators more likely to see and eat colourful ones why be colourful? sexual selection - stronger in low predation areas

Question 30

why do sexual and natural selection conflict?

Answer 30

sexual favours elaborate traits, this makes it easier to be seen/eaten

Question 31

what happens to guppies in high predation areas?

Answer 31

females relax their sexual preferences - accept males with less colorful markings

Question 32

what influences reproductive success?

Answer 32

age, size, longevity, no. offspring and quality of offspring per clutch

Question 33

whats good about shoaling?

Answer 33

anti predator behavior

Question 34

morphological definition of a species?

Answer 34

shape or form of body parts

Question 35

ecological definition of a species?

Answer 35

species may interbreed but may supply different niches

Question 36

how do species form?

Answer 36

gene flows diverge, speciation, populations accumulate differences via mutations so become different, gene flow counters this

Question 37

what are reproductive barriers?

Answer 37

without gene-flow small mutations add up until members of the two populations can't interbreed

Question 38

what is allopatric speciation?

Answer 38

gene flow prevented when populations becomes separated by geographical barriers once separated populations diverge and natural selection plays a role

Question 39

whats genetic drift?

Answer 39

change in frequency of an allele in a population due to random sampling when pop divided each might not have representative sample of genetic diversity - especially if small

Question 40

what drives speciation?

Answer 40

physical and behavioural reproductive barriers

Question 41

what's sympatric speciation?

Answer 41

reproductive barriers leading to subset of population not mating with other subsets

Question 42

whats polyploidy?

Answer 42

speciation occurs during an error in cell division leading to cells with an extra set of chromosomes

Question 43

whats habitat differentiation?

Answer 43

a subset population uses a new component of the habitat leading to reproductive barriers arising - can give differences in resource availabilty

Question 44

pre-zygotic reproductive barriers

Answer 44

habitat, temporal, behavioural, mechanical, gametic isolation

Question 45

post-zygotic reproductive barriers

Answer 45

after mating, things that mean fertilised eggs will not lead to viable offspring e.g hybrid breakdown