Exam 1: An Overview of Evolutionary Biology

As conservation biologists try to slow the rate of human-caused extinctions,they often have to make hard choices about which habitats and species to save with their limited resources.The textbook presented the case of the cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria in Africa.Argue that the recent loss of 200 of the 400 species of recently evolved (during the last 14,000 years)fish due to the introduction of the Nile perch as a food fish is a minor phylogenetic loss or that it is a tragic loss at an evolutionary hotspot.

Good theory can either precede or postdate data collecting and hypothesis testing.Describe an example,from a discipline of your choice,in which observation or experiment prompted the development of a model,and provide a second example in which already existing theory encouraged experimental research.

Darwin's theory of natural selection is considered a paradigm shift-a theory that has wide-ranging effects.Describe another paradigm shift that has occurred in biology.Make a case for why this shift has fundamentally changed the way scientists see the world and the sorts of questions they ask.

If you could protect from extinction only the lineages derived from two of the nodes in the figure above,which pair would you save to yield the greatest phylogenetic diversity?

The figure above indicates that as the number of male competitors for a single female chicken increased,

Each tip of the phylogenetic tree above represents

During the observations of a species of blue moon butterflies on the Samoan islands of Upolu and Savaii,99% of the butterflies were originally female and only 1% were male,but in only five years the male:female sex ratio had returned to nearly the expected 1:1.What caused this?

Darwin realized that changes that have occurred in species over time are the result of

Fisher's sex ratio model predicts a 1:1 female:male sex ratio.Why has this ratio evolved?

Do you believe that natural selection could have affected the behavior of humans towards dogs over time? Why or why not? Provide a short explanation of how this might have happened.

Suppose that you find the sex ratio in a population you are studying is different from what you predicted in your model.Using simple proportions of male and female offspring,show how natural selection should move the sex ratio to the value you predicted in your model over a few generations.

The vast branching tree of historical relationships for all known species that live or ever have lived

Sources for the data that evolutionary biologists use to test their hypotheses are derived from many subdisciplines of the biological sciences.Identify the five data sources illustrated in the photographs above.

Manipulative experiments

The study of evolutionary biology has influenced the techniques used by the health and livestock industries in which of the following ways?

Describe Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Describe an evolutionary arms race,other than the ones effecting the development of pesticides and antibiotic resistance,that has a practical application.

Given the fact that humans are the ones producing and distributing pesticides,why do we call the development of pesticide resistance natural selection rather than artificial selection?

The primary,but not only,process responsible for the modifications that occur in organisms over geological time is

Each time a species goes extinct