BIOLOGY 181 MAIN EXAMINATION SET 2025/2026
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔Negative control group - ✔✔a group that provides results in the absence of a
treatment
✔✔Positive control group - ✔✔a group that receives treatment with a known result and
shows what to expect with a success
✔✔Confounding variable - ✔✔a variable that can influence both the independent and
dependent variables causing one to make a wrong interpretation
✔✔Proximate explanation - ✔✔an explanation that uses the immediate influences or
short-term causes
✔✔Ultimate explanation - ✔✔a historical explanation that uses a long term perspective
✔✔Ethology - ✔✔the scientific study of the biological basis of behavior
✔✔Basic research - ✔✔research that is motivated by intellectual curiosity or scientific
discovery with the objective to understand
✔✔Applied research - ✔✔research that has technological applications, is motivated by
problem-solving, and has the objective to find a solution
✔✔Pseudoscience - ✔✔a fake or false science where hypotheses and predictions
cannot be tested
✔✔Junk science - ✔✔science that uses biased data, ignores contradicting scientific
evidence, and presents unproven theories as scientific fact
✔✔Population - ✔✔members of the same species that interact with one another in a
given area
✔✔Short-term change - ✔✔changes in populations that take place over a short period
and don't last very long
✔✔Phenotypic plasticity - ✔✔the tendency of a particular genotype to produce different
phenotypes or behaviors under altered environmental conditions to be better suited to
the environment's conditions, and in doing so, increase its fitness
✔✔Phenotype - ✔✔an organism's physical traits
, ✔✔Fitness - ✔✔an evolutionary term to describe how successful an individual is at
reproducing compared to its peers
✔✔Natural selection - ✔✔the process that is only possible if there is variation,
heritability, and differential reproduction through which species adapt to their
environment and heritable traits make an organism more likely to survive and
successfully reproduce thus becoming more common in a population over successive
generations
✔✔Differential reproduction - ✔✔the idea that organisms that are best suited to a given
environment will be most likely and able to reproduce
✔✔Selective pressure - ✔✔something in the environment that stimulates a change in
the frequency of one of the variations of a trait
✔✔Evolutionary medicine - ✔✔a field that applies what we know about evolution to
improve the understanding of our health, why we get sick, and how we can better
prevent disease through the study of the root causes for why the human body evolved
the way that it did
✔✔Genotype - ✔✔the genetic information of an individual organism or the coding for a
trait for an organism
✔✔Crown group - ✔✔a group that includes all of the living member of a group back to
its most recent common ancestor and its extinct relatives
✔✔Coevolution - ✔✔a form of natural selection in which two species evolve based on
the adaptations of each to the other
✔✔Niche - ✔✔a three-dimensional aspect of a species' physical, environmental, and
time needs in the environment for survival
✔✔Evolution - ✔✔a change in allelic frequency in a population over time
✔✔Allele - ✔✔a section of DNA that codes for a gene
✔✔Hardy-Weinberg Principle - ✔✔the principle that states that proportions of genotypes
do not change in a population if no mutations take place, no genes are transferred to or
from other sources, random mating is occurring, a population size is relatively large, and
no natural selection occurs
✔✔Point mutation - ✔✔the only way in which new alleles can be derived where a
change in DNA results in a change the protein
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS GRADED A+
✔✔Negative control group - ✔✔a group that provides results in the absence of a
treatment
✔✔Positive control group - ✔✔a group that receives treatment with a known result and
shows what to expect with a success
✔✔Confounding variable - ✔✔a variable that can influence both the independent and
dependent variables causing one to make a wrong interpretation
✔✔Proximate explanation - ✔✔an explanation that uses the immediate influences or
short-term causes
✔✔Ultimate explanation - ✔✔a historical explanation that uses a long term perspective
✔✔Ethology - ✔✔the scientific study of the biological basis of behavior
✔✔Basic research - ✔✔research that is motivated by intellectual curiosity or scientific
discovery with the objective to understand
✔✔Applied research - ✔✔research that has technological applications, is motivated by
problem-solving, and has the objective to find a solution
✔✔Pseudoscience - ✔✔a fake or false science where hypotheses and predictions
cannot be tested
✔✔Junk science - ✔✔science that uses biased data, ignores contradicting scientific
evidence, and presents unproven theories as scientific fact
✔✔Population - ✔✔members of the same species that interact with one another in a
given area
✔✔Short-term change - ✔✔changes in populations that take place over a short period
and don't last very long
✔✔Phenotypic plasticity - ✔✔the tendency of a particular genotype to produce different
phenotypes or behaviors under altered environmental conditions to be better suited to
the environment's conditions, and in doing so, increase its fitness
✔✔Phenotype - ✔✔an organism's physical traits
, ✔✔Fitness - ✔✔an evolutionary term to describe how successful an individual is at
reproducing compared to its peers
✔✔Natural selection - ✔✔the process that is only possible if there is variation,
heritability, and differential reproduction through which species adapt to their
environment and heritable traits make an organism more likely to survive and
successfully reproduce thus becoming more common in a population over successive
generations
✔✔Differential reproduction - ✔✔the idea that organisms that are best suited to a given
environment will be most likely and able to reproduce
✔✔Selective pressure - ✔✔something in the environment that stimulates a change in
the frequency of one of the variations of a trait
✔✔Evolutionary medicine - ✔✔a field that applies what we know about evolution to
improve the understanding of our health, why we get sick, and how we can better
prevent disease through the study of the root causes for why the human body evolved
the way that it did
✔✔Genotype - ✔✔the genetic information of an individual organism or the coding for a
trait for an organism
✔✔Crown group - ✔✔a group that includes all of the living member of a group back to
its most recent common ancestor and its extinct relatives
✔✔Coevolution - ✔✔a form of natural selection in which two species evolve based on
the adaptations of each to the other
✔✔Niche - ✔✔a three-dimensional aspect of a species' physical, environmental, and
time needs in the environment for survival
✔✔Evolution - ✔✔a change in allelic frequency in a population over time
✔✔Allele - ✔✔a section of DNA that codes for a gene
✔✔Hardy-Weinberg Principle - ✔✔the principle that states that proportions of genotypes
do not change in a population if no mutations take place, no genes are transferred to or
from other sources, random mating is occurring, a population size is relatively large, and
no natural selection occurs
✔✔Point mutation - ✔✔the only way in which new alleles can be derived where a
change in DNA results in a change the protein
