and Correct Answers.
adaptation - Answer Inherited characteristic of an organism that enhances its survival and
reproduction in a specific environment.
analogous - Answer Having characteristics that are similar because of convergent evolution,
not homology.
artificial selection - Answer The selective breeding of domesticated plants and animals to
encourage the occurrence of desirable traits.
biogeography - Answer The scientific study of the past and present geographic distributions of
species.
convergent evolution - Answer The evolution of similar features in independent evolutionary
lineages.
endemic - Answer Referring to a species that is confined to a specific geographic area.
evolution - Answer Descent with modification; the idea that living species are descendants of
ancestral species that were different from the present-day ones; also defined more narrowly as
the change in the genetic composition of a population from generation to generation.
evolutionary tree - Answer A branching diagram that reflects a hypothesis about evolutionary
relationships among groups of organisms.
fossil - Answer A preserved remnant or impression of an organism that lived in the past.
homologous structures - Answer Structures in different species that are similar because of
common ancestry.
homologs - Answer A pair of chromosomes of the same length, centromere position, and
staining pattern that possess genes for the same characters at corresponding loci. One