Unit 1 - Quiz Questions Flashcards
Anton van Leeuwenhoek made an important contribution to the development of the cell theory. How?
He invented more powerful microscopes and was the first to describe the diversity of cells.
What does it mean to say that experimental conditions are controlled?
Physical conditions are identical for all groups tested.
What does the term evolution mean?
The characteristics of populations change through time.
What does it mean to say that a characteristic of an organism is heritable?
The characteristic can be passed on to offspring.
In biology, to what does the term fitness refer?
An individual’s ability to survive and reproduce.
Could both the food competition hypothesis and the sexual selection hypothesis explain why giraffes have long necks? Why or why not?
Yes. Long necks could be advantageous for more than one reason.
What would researchers have to demonstrate to convince you that they had discovered life on another planet?
That the entity they had discovered replicates, processes information, acquires and uses energy, is cellular, and that its populations evolve.
Why was it important for Linnaeus to establish the rule that only one type of organism can have a particular genus and species name?
The rule ensured that two different organisms would never end up with the same name.
What does it mean to say that a species is adapted to a particular habitat?
Over time, traits that increased the fitness of individuals in this habitat became increasingly more frequent in the population.
Explain how selection occurs during natural selection. What is selected, and why?
Individuals with certain traits selected, in the sense that they produce more offspring.
The following two statements explain the logic behind the use of molecular sequence data to estimate evolutionary relationships:
“If the theory of evolution is true, then rRNA sequences should be very similar in closely related organisms but less similar in organisms that are less closely related.”
“On a phylogenetic tree, branches that share a recent common ancestor represent species that are closely related; branches that don’t share recent common ancestors represent species that are more distantly related.”
Is the logic of these statements sound? Why or why not?
Yes. If evolution is defined as “change in the characteristics of a population over time,” then those organisms that are most closely related should have experienced less change over time. On a phylogenetic tree species with substantially similar rRNA sequences would be diagrammed with a closer common ancestor–one that had the sequences they inherited–than the ancestors shared between species with dissimilar rRNA sequences.
Which domains include prokaryotes?
Archaea and Bacteria
A null hypothesis in an experiment is ___.
an alternative possibility in the event that the explanation being tested does not apply.
Which of the following statements best describes the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes?
Eukaryotic cells have a membrane bound nucleus; prokaryotic cells do not.
A group of individuals of the same species living in the same area at the same time constitutes a ____.
population
