Evolution By Perri, Marina and Chloe
Who was Charles Darwin?
●Charles Darwin was the father of evolution ● Wrote a book o On the Origins of Species ●Buried next to Isaac Newton
Who was Charles Lyell?
●American geologist ●He studied landforms and how the Earth changed over time
Thomas Malthus
●Thomas Malthus was a sociologist, scientist, and a politician. ●He studied why some people survived disease and some didn’t. ●(Survival of the Fittest)
Who was Alfred Wallace?
●He immediately came up with the same exact conclusions as Darwin ●Darwin contacts Wallace - they work together and publish articles independently and together
What were were Darwin’s two main points?
●Descent with modification o New organism forms due to the accumulation of mutations over millions of years New species evolved ●Natural Selection o Nature selects the stronger and more desirable and those traits are then passed down to their offspring Beneficial mutation
What is a fossil?
●The remains of a formerly existing creature from a long time ago
What is a fossil record?
●A timeline of when organisms existed in relationships to other organisms
What are the two ways to determine how something is relative to something else?
●Relative dating - this is older/younger than that without a timeframe ●Absolute dating - carbon dating pinpoints a more specific time period ●Half Life - the amount of time it takes for half an element to break down and disappear ●Ex. Carbone has a life of 5,730 years
What does Extinct mean?
●When the last living member of a species dies ●There are no more of that certain species
What are homologous structures?
●Structures that look the same but are different ●Ex: Cats front foot and human hand ●This suggests a common ancestor
Analogous Structures?
●They look different but do the same thing ●Ex: Birds, bees, butterflies all have wings but don’t look alike ●They do not have a common ancestor
What is a vestigial structure?
●Structure in the body that was used at one time in the past but no longer is used during current time Ex. appendix, and tail bone in humans
What is variation?
●The natural or expected differences within 1 type of organisms ●EX: size and height
Natural vs. Artificial Selection?
●The idea that nature chooses what is more desirable vs. selection by organisms to support or not support living ●EX: teacup poodles
Antibiotics vs. Pesticides
●Antibiotics can cause medications to work in the future because organisms adapt to them (natural variation) ●Bacteria has natural variation and it changes depending on their environment ●Pesticides work in a similar way ○farmers use them on crops ●Some insects can withstand the pesticides
What is speciation?
●The formation of new species due to the accumulation of mutations
What is geographic isolation?
●A huge impediment to evolution and reproduction ●Location makes it difficult to breed
What is reproductive isolation?
●When two organisms are capable of breeding but due to timing differences in the reproductive cycle, they do not breed with each other ●Ex. Skunks and cranes
Genetic Drift
●The movement or change in genes from one generation to the next ●EX: eye color in Sweden (prone to blue eyes)
Gene Pool
●All of the available genes in the population
What is adaptive radiation?
●Life can be found in the most extreme environments ●Wherever something can live, something will live ●Ex. Hawaii/ albatross
Bottleneck/Founder effect
When a disease or natural disaster wipes out a significant amount of the population, it creates a smaller gene pool and some genes are lost forever EX: beads in a bottle, stuck in the bottom
What is the difference between disruptive, directional, and stabilizing selection?
●Stabilizing - favors the average ●Directional - favors one extreme or the other ●Disruptive - favors both extremes at the same time
What is cost-benefit analysis?
●The measuring of pros and cons to determine a course of action
What is gradualism?
●Slowly over time, mutations and changes will occur and organisms will evolve gradually
What is punctuated equilibrium?
●Philosophy that organisms stay the way they are for long periods of time, then there is a drastic change due to the environment. ●In the end, they change quickly and stay the same for a long time again
What is co- evolution?
●This is when multiple species evolve together ●Change over time ●EX. hummingbird and flower = nectar
What is parallel evolution?
●Organisms that evolve along a parallel pathway but do not necessarily share a common ancestor ●Ex: Shark and a whale o similar body type to move through water but not related
What is divergent evolution?
●Organisms that share common ancestors and evolve up to a certain point - then they branch and develop in different directions ●Ex. human hand and a whale flipper
What is convergent evolution?
●Very similar to parallel evolution ●organisms that developed on different paths through mutations and came to a common structure
What were the first organisms on Earth?
●Organism were anaerobic – didn’t breathe oxygen ●Not heterotrophs – made their own food – autotrophs ●Give off oxygen over hundreds of millions of years ●Organisms were then able to become more complex and multicellular
What was the Endosymbiotic Theory?
●Hypothesis ●Mitochondria and chloroplasts one lived on their own ●They merged w another type of simple cell and all benefited from this relationship ●Mutualistic relationship and over time became dependent on each other ●Need each other to survive
What was Miller and Urey?
●Theory of life – Miller’s Flask