Honors BiologyEvolution Take-Home TestName ______
Answer the following prompts on another piece of paper. Typing your answers and using correct spelling throughout will earn you a 3% bonus. () You may use your textbooks, notes or my power points as a source. I expect all answers to be in complete sentences and to completely address all parts of the question or prompt.
1. Suppose a rock slide isolates a very small number of animals from the rest of their population. How might this reproductive isolation impact the long-term survival of the new, smaller population? Include scenarios where the impact could be a positive outcome or could be a negative outcome.
2. Darwin hypothesized that natural selection shaped the beaks of different finch populations on the Galápagos Islands. Describe how the Grants tested this hypothesis. Review their experimental methods and results. Did their data support or refute Darwin’s hypothesis? Explain
3. Write a summary of the ways in which natural selection operates on polygenic traits. (Looking at figures 16-6, 16-7, and 16-8 in your book may be helpful)
4. Write two paragraphs comparing conditions on early Earth (about 3.8 billion years ago) with conditions on Earth today. ( DO NOT just list characteristics of each separately; you need to specifically say how the items are like each other and how they differ from each other)
5. Compare and contrast a mass extinction of species with the more typical processes of natural selection.
6. The half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years. What is the age of a fossil containing 1/16th the amount of carbon-14 of living organisms? Explain your reasoning, show your work to get full credit.
7. Explain the theory of endosymbiosis, include possible benefits to the host cell and the prokaryotic cell.
8. You are a biologist searching for a new species in the Amazon jungle. You find two new species of beetles, beetle A and beetle B, that resemble each other closely but also have some different markings on their wings. In addition, both beetle A and beetle B resemble a known species, beetle C. How could you use DNA similarities and differences to determine whether beetle A and beetle B are more closely related to each other than to beetle C. Construct all possible cladograms that would represent possible evolutionary relationships between the three beetles.
9. Explain the uses of the Hardy-Weinberg equation (in diagram below).
If a population of fruit flies either have red eyes (dominant) or bar eyes (recessive) and 20% of the population of fruit flies is bar eyed what is the frequency of the dominant allele (R) and what is the frequency of the recessive allele (r)? Show your work
10. Define and give examples of: adaptive radiation, convergent evolution, and coevolution.