Ch 15 vocab and exam study guide Study guide

Important dates:

Vocab quiz: Friday March 27th

Ch 15 exam: Tuesday March 31st

Vocab quiz terms:

Overproduction

Genetic variation

Struggle for existence

Differential reproduction

Fossil

Superposition

Relative age

Transitional species

Homologous structure

Analogous structure

Vestigial structure

Artificial selection

Natural selection

CH 15 exam study guide

  1. What conditions are required for fossils to form? What is a fossil?
  2. Which famous islands did Darwin visit on his trip around the world?
  3. Darwin saw that the finches on these islands had different shapes of beak. He proposed that they came from a common ancestor. What does this mean?
  4. Could animals on these islands migrated from South America?
  5. DNA analysis of two species can show that they have similar sequences of nucleotides. What is this evidence for?
  1. Explain coevolution.
  2. Explain the contribution to evolutionary theory provided by Jean Baptist Lamarck.
  3. Explain the main idea of natural selection.
  4. Explain the modern synthesis of evolutionary history?
  5. Explain uniformitarianism (Charles Lyell).
  6. How do homologous structures provide evidence that organisms share a common ancestor?
  7. How have humans used artificial selection?
  8. Identify an example of two human vestigial structures.
  9. If food becomes scarce, what will likely happen within a population?
  10. If two species have the blood protein, what does that tell us about their evolutionary history?
  11. Is it possible for offspring to inherit acquired characteristics from their parents? (tattoos, lots of muscles, etc.)
  12. Prior to Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, there was a strongly held belief that the Earth and all her species were permanent and unchanging. What does this mean?
  1. The wings of a bee and the wings of a bird evolved independently within those groups (their common ancestor didn’t have wings). This is also the case for the beak of a bird and the beak of a squid (yes… squid have beaks… and they’re very scary looking too). Is this an example of analogous or homologous structures?
  1. What are the requirements necessary for natural selection to occur?
  2. What can happen to populations of the same species living in two different areas?
  3. What is a phylogeny?
  4. What is an adaptation?
  5. What is convergent evolution?
  6. What is divergent evolution?
  7. What is the mechanism of natural selection?