Deck 8: Plant Systematics and Evolution

Question 1

Briefly describe the concept of evolution by natural selection.

Answer 1

The concept of natural selection explains that how a species can have breeding populations adapted to local conditions. Based on the principle of natural selection the selection of genotypes occurs and that would result in offspring with better reproductive capabilities.
Natural selection always results in better survival of an organism, so the genetic changes driven by the natural selection make the species to adapt to the local conditions so that they can survive. These species may exhibit high genetic variation may be because out breeding, but gradually due to the inbreeding in these adapted species, the genetic variation will be minimized and they evolve as a separate species. 

Question 2

Why are only inherited traits important in the evolutionary process

Answer 2

A neutral inherited trait is the one which has no advantage or disadvantage against the survival of the organism. Advantageous inherited trait means, which favours the survival of the organism. As the neutral trait does not affect the organism's survival, it is simply inherited, because natural selection deletes the disadvantageous alleles only.
The selection against disadvantageous alleles and increasing the frequency of advantageous alleles is known as adaptive evolution. Deletion of neutral traits may be advantageous or disadvantageous for the survival of the organism, which may affect future selection.

Question 3

How do mutations (see Chapter 7) lead to the evolution of new species

Answer 3

The three evolutionary processes that can cause evolution are,
1). Mutation
2). Migration
3). Selection
Mutation: Change in base pair sequences cause mutations. The mutations may be harmful or beneficial. If the mutation is beneficial, the population must be migrated to another region to spread the beneficial alleles resulted from mutation.
For example, Mutations result in genetic drift which in turn results in the loss of heterozygosity. This loss of one parental copy of nucleotide gene bases may lead to the lethal and dangerous consequences of the living being in the following of life. Mutation-drift balance is likely to occur in small populations, in which little selection is there against mutants and the drift fixes the mutations.

Question 4

What was the lasting contribution of Linnaeus How was the binomial system an improvement over polynomials

Question 5

In what ways can systematics preserve biodiversity

Question 6

What are genetic barcodes What are some of the challenges in identifying universal genetic barcodes in plants and fungi

Question 7

List the common names of some of the wildflowers in your area. Determine the type of information each name imparts.

Question 8

Darwin identified four conditions that are necessary if evolution is to occur: genetic variation, overproduction of offspring, competition for limited resources, and reproduction of the fittest.
Imagine a plant population that reproduces entirely by asexual methods, such as spreading by underground stems. Although there are many individual plants in the population, they are essentially a single plant genetically; that is, they are clones. Can natural selection act on a population of clones Is this population capable of evolving Explain.

Question 9

Natural selection favors the survivorship of those individuals in a population that possess characteristics crucial for survival.
You observe that trees in a part of a forest in which deer are plentiful have higher branches than the trees in a fenced-off part of the forest. Explain the different selective forces at work in these two environments.

Question 10

Using a plant dictionary, look up the scientific names and their meanings for common houseplants and landscape plants in your area.