BIOL 2400 Exam Questions and Answers Latest 2023/2024 | 100% Verified

BIOL 2400 Exam Nicolaus Steno () - ANS Discovered fossils (tongue stones = teeth) special creation - ANS each organism originated independently and since the time of creation, each organism has remained the same Carolus Linnaeus () - ANS father of modern taxonomy argued that species are unchanging Georges Buffon () - ANS each creature made of "particles" that could change when a species moved to a new place first hints of evolution Insights from Geology and Paleontology in Late 1700s - ANS rocks formed slowly = earth must be old fossils differed from species today = species can go extinct similar fossils found in similarly aged rocks = species appear and disappear gradual changes in geology explained by processes we see today Jean-Baptiste Lamarck - ANS first detailed theory of evolution/species change through time ex. Giraffe's growing longer necks Charles Darwin - ANS English natural scientist who formulated a theory of evolution by natural selection () Uniformitarianism - ANS observable natural processes responsible for events in the past Darwin's observations (4) - ANS 1. lots of diversity of similar forms 2. Galapagos animals were more similar to mainland than to Cape Verde island fauna 3. fossils were recognizably associated with extant fauna but yet were dramatically different (law of succession) 4. humans, seals, bats and other mammals look superficially different law of succession - ANS fossils and living organisms from one area were similar to each other but different from the other areas Darwin's Inferences - ANS non-random survival and reproduction will result in proliferation of those types with higher fitness Fitness - ANS a measure of the appropriateness of an individual's attributes for a particular environment Darwin's Knowledge Gaps - ANS Did not understand Mendelian inheritance Did not have a mechanism for inherited traits Phylogeny - ANS visual representation of the evolutionary history of populations, genes, or species Clade - ANS an organism and all of its descendants Cladogram - ANS phylogeny where time scale is not depicted Outgroup - ANS a group that is clearly outside of the group whose evolutionary relationships want to be inferred, but closely related to that group - root the tree - used to infer which character states are ancestral Homologous Characters - ANS present in two or more taxa because they are inherited from a common ancestor Analogous Characters - ANS similar in structure and function but arose through convergent evolution rather than from a common ancestor Synapomorphy - ANS shared derived character state Parsimony - ANS simplest explanation