Exam 13: How Populations Evolve

In a large population of plants, notches in the leaves are caused by a dominant allele N and lack of notches by a recessive allele n. Over many generations the proportion of plants in the population with notched leaves increases. What is the most likely cause?

Lyell's book Principles of Geology, which Darwin read on board the H.M.S. Beagle, argued in favor of which of the following concepts?

Aristotle believed that

Imagine that you are studying a very large population of moths that is isolated from gene flow. A single gene controls wing color. Half of the moths have white-spotted wings (genotype WW or Ww)and half of the moths have plain brown wings (ww). There are no new mutations, individuals mate randomly, and there is no natural selection on wing color. How will p, the frequency of the dominant allele, change over time?

Broccoli, cabbages, and Brussels sprouts all descend from the same wild mustard and can still interbreed. These varieties were produced by

What evidence is used to determine the branching sequence of an evolutionary tree?

A rabbit population consists of animals that are either very dark on top or very light on top. The color pattern is not related to sex. No rabbit shows intermediate coloration (medium darkness). This pattern might result from

Who developed a theory of evolution almost identical to Darwin's?

Genetic drift resulting from a disaster that drastically reduces population size is called

After a copper smelter begins operation, local downwind populations of plants begin to adapt to the resulting air pollution. Scientists document, for example, that the acid tolerance of several plant species has increased significantly in the polluted area. This is an example of

The frequency of homozygous dominant individuals in a population that is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is equal to

A dog breeder wishes to develop a breed that does not bark. She starts with a diverse mixture of dogs. Generation after generation, she allows only the quietest dogs to breed. After 30 years of work she has a new breed of dog with interesting traits, but on average, the dogs still bark at about the same rate as other dog breeds. Which of the following would be a logical explanation for her failure?

Mothers and teachers often say they need another pair of eyes on the backs of their heads. And another pair of hands would come in handy in many situations. You can imagine that these traits would have been advantageous to our early hunter-gatherer ancestors as well. According to sound evolutionary reasoning, what is the most likely explanation for why humans do not have these traits?

Which of the following statements best describes the true nature of natural selection?

After reading the paragraph below, answer the questions that follow. Desert pupfish live in springs of the American Southwest. Today there are about 30 species of pupfish, but they all evolved from a common Pleistocene ancestor. The southwestern United States was once much wetter than it is now, and the Pleistocene pupfish flourished over a wide geographic area. Over thousands of years, however, the Sierra Nevada mountain range was pushed upward by geological forces, blocking rainfall from the Pacific Ocean. As the large lakes dried up, small groups of pupfish remained in springs and pools fed by groundwater seepage. Now, although many of these small springs still have pupfish, each population, through evolution, has become very different from populations of pupfish in other springs. -The variation in gene pools among the 30 pupfish populations occurred through an evolutionary mechanism called

Which of the following disciplines has found evidence for evolution based on the native distributions (locations)of living species?

A population is

The ultimate source of all new alleles is

Which of the following statements about adaptation is true?

-Which statement best describes the mode of selection depicted in the figure?