What Is the Percentage of Species That Have Become Extinct?

14.1 Assessment

1. What is the percentage of species that have become extinct?
2. What is the main evidence available to scientists about life in the past?
3. Why aren’t there more fossils found of these species?
4. Why are fossils found most often near aquatic environments?
5. What type of rock do most fossils form in?
6. How is sedimentary rock formed?
7. Explain what minerals do in a fossil.
8. What does a paleontologist find out from a fossil?
9. What is the difference between relative dating and radiometric dating?
10. What is the law of superposition and how does it relate to relative dating?
11. What is the geological time scale? What is used to distinguish one division from another?
12. What is the difference between continental drift and plate tectonics?
13. Name the two theories for the early origin of life and the modern origin of life.
14. Describe the endosymbiont theory.

15.1 assessment

1. Why would Darwin be puzzled about why fossils of marine life are found in high elevations of the Andes mountains?
2. What did Darwin collect as evidence that led to his theory?
3. What was the comment from the colony’s vice governor that should have stunned Darwin?
4. How would organisms from the mainland reach an island?
5. What did Darwin propose to explain how the organisms changed once on an island?
6. What is artificial selection? How does it differ from natural selection?
7. List the four basic principles that explain how traits of a population can change over time.
8. Describe the relationship between evolution and natural selection.

Honors

9. In genetics, variation refers to an individual that possesses characteristics different from the others of the same kind. What would be the consequences for evolution if in a species there was not variation.

10. What is the likely evolutionary effect on a species of an increase in global temperatures over time?

15.2 Assessment

1. What types of evidence do scientist’s use to argue for evolution?

2. What is a transitional fossil?

3. Describe the differences between derived traits and ancestral traits found in transitional fossils.

4. What are three types of structures used as evidence in comparative anatomy?

5. Describe the differences between all three structures.

6. What is an example of a vestigial structure in humans?

7. What have scientist’s concluded from comparing embryo’s between species?

8. What is an example of a complex metabolic molecule in organisms?

9. Scientist’s that the more closely related species are, the greater______of sequences of amino acids will be shared.

10. Describe the geographic observations Darwin discovered about species in South America.

11. Why did islands have more different species than nearby main lands in South America?

12. What is biogeography?

13. What are three factors that help explain ancestral relationships and the distribution of fossils around the world today?

14. Describe the difference between reproductive success and fitness.

15. What are two examples of adaptation discussed in class?

Honors

16. Explain why vestigial structures are considered examples of homologous structures?

17. How do mimicry and camouflage increase the fitness of a species?

18. How would an albino of a species that is normally green and lives among leaves be less fit?

19. Research has shown that if a prescribed dose of antibiotic is not take completely, some bacteria might not be killed and the disease might return. How does natural selection explain this phenomenon?

20. What can be concluded from the fact that many insects no longer are resistant to certain pesticides.

15.3 Assessment

1. What are two fields of study that have expanded evolutionary theory.

2. What is known as the raw material at the population level?

3. What is a gene pool?

4. Define allelic frequency and describe the relationship between genetic equilibrium and allelic frequencies.

5. What is the Hardy Weinberg principle?

6. What are the five ways to maintain genetic equilibrium?

7. What the five ways the Hardy Weinberg principle is violated?

8. Compare and contrast genetic drift and natural selection as mechanisms of evolution.

9. Contrast the two types of genetic drift: founder’s effect and bottleneck

10. What is gene flow?

11. What impact does migration have on genetic variation?

12. Describe the difference between random mating and non random mating.

13. What are four ways that natural selection changes an organism’s phenotype?

14. Describe the differences between the four types of selection.

15. Contrast species and speciation.

16.What is the difference between pre-zygotic isolating mechanism and the post-zygotic isolating mechanism?

17. What are the three ways that pre-zygotic isolation prevents genotypes from entering a population’s gene pool?

18. What are the two types of speciation? What is the difference between them?

19. What are the three patterns of evolution? What is the difference between them?

20. Compare and contrast gradualism and punctuated equilibrium.

Honors

21. Why does genetic drift have its greatest effects in small, isolated populations?

22. Considering what you know about the Hardy-Weinberg principle, why do you think most scientists suggest speciation occurs at a low rate in large population?

23. Why is it almost impossible for alleles to be bread out of a large population?

24. Why are behaviors such as courting songs and displays in birds extremely important as an isolating mechanism in populations?

25. Why would it benefit a flower to coevolve with the hummingbird?

26. Does coevolution always from relationships that benefit both species involved?

27. What would you conclude about the evolutionary process that produces two unrelated species that share similar niches on different continents?