Exercise 2

Question 1

what is the biological species concept?

Answer 1

it loosely defines a species as a group of organisms that can interbreed and produce viable off-spring

Question 2

what are the limits of the biological species concept?

Answer 2

fossils

as biologists discovered more diversity the classic morphological and interbreeding-based methods of determining species have become less useful

Question 3

what role does DNA play in photooptic expression in organisms?

Answer 3

DNA codes for amino acids which in turn code for proteins that have the potential to exhibit the phenotypic expression

Question 4

why might a single nucleotide difference lead to varying phenotypes? why might it not?

Answer 4

a single nucleotide difference could code for a different amino acid which could code for a different protein

however, redundancy in nucleotide codes could allow for a single nucleotide difference to produce the same amino acid

Question 5

what are the limitations of the morphological method of determining species?

Answer 5

doesn’t work with unicellular organisms

if they look alike it could just be because of convergent evolution

Question 6

what are the limitations of the molecular method of determining species?

Answer 6

less subjective

extensive

does not work with fossils