Deck 16: The Evolution of Biodiversity

Question 1

The oldest fossils of terrestrial animals are of ___________.

A) spiders and millipedes
B) insects and snakes
C) mice and bats
D) birds and mammals

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which of the following methods would give the most accurate estimate of the age of a fossil?

A) measuring the decay of radioisotopes in the fossil
B) comparing the depth of the fossil in the Earth's crust to the depth of fossils of known ages
C) comparing the chemical makeup of the fossil with that of the surrounding rock
D) determining where on Pangaea the fossil was formed

Answer 2

A

Question 3

Which of the following groups of animals evolved the most recently?

A) invertebrates
B) amphibians
C) reptiles
D) mammals

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Which of the following was NOT necessary for plants to develop in order to adapt to life on land?

A) photosynthesis
B) roots
C) waterproofing
D) transport mechanisms within stems

Question 5

Fossil anklebones from the ancestors of whales and the anklebones of hippopotamuses have the same shape,which is an adaptation for running on land.This suggests that _____________.

A) whales and ancient hippopotamuses underwent convergent evolution
B) whales and ancient hippopotamuses evolved from a common ancestor
C) the fossils of ancient hippopotamuses should be found in the same location and at the same depth from the Earth's surface as the fossils of ancient whales
D) whales evolved from aquatic dinosaurs,whereas hippopotamuses evolved from terrestrial dinosaurs

Question 6

Which of the following is NOT documented by the fossil record?

A) Some organisms that lived in the past are unlike living organisms we see today.
B) Some organisms that once lived on Earth have disappeared.
C) The species living today are the same as the species that lived in the distant past.
D) Over time,life has evolved.

Question 7

At which labeled point in the following graph are the first eukaryotes thought to have evolved?

A) Point A
B) Point B
C) Point C
D) Point D

Question 8

The first eukaryotes evolved approximately _____ years ago.

A) 200,000
B) 200 million
C) 2 billion
D) 2 trillion

Question 9

The first land plants ____________.

A) were descendants of fungi that developed photosynthesis
B) evolved from green algae that could already carry out photosynthesis
C) were ferns and small shrubs
D) grew from the seeds of marine plants

Question 10

The appearance of eukaryotes may have been delayed until the Earth's atmosphere accumulated more _______________.

A) oxygen
B) nitrogen
C) carbon
D) sulfur

Question 11

The first vertebrates to colonize land were ____________.

A) birds
B) mammals
C) amphibians
D) reptiles

Question 12

We know that whales evolved from the same evolutionary ancestor as hoofed animals like cows and hippopotamuses because ____________.

A) whales,cows,and hippopotamuses have the same DNA sequence
B) whales,cows,and hippopotamuses all exhibit an anklebone with a unique shape
C) scientists have been able to induce whale embryos to develop into cows in the laboratory
D) remnants of horns are obvious on the skulls of whales

Question 13

Why did it take so long for eukaryotes to evolve after photosynthetic prokaryotes began releasing O₂ into the atmosphere?

A) O₂ moves slowly through larger cells,making it hard for them to gather O₂;thus,higher O₂ concentrations had to accumulate before eukaryotic cells could be efficiently supported.
B) The ability to use O₂ had to evolve before cells could survive in an O₂-rich atmosphere.
C) The ability to break down the waste products of O₂ use had to evolve before cells could use it to create energy.
D) Enough prokaryotes had to become extinct to provide eukaryotes with a niche to occupy before they could evolve.

Question 14

Scientists use existing fossils to predict what the transitional forms between organisms might look like.Why is it so hard for scientists to find fossils of these transitional forms?

A) Scientists have no way to determine how deep in a rock to look for a transitional fossil,so they just have to dig and dig until they find the right fossil.
B) Because of continental drift,the exact location of where a transitional fossil should be found cannot be determined.Looking for a particular fossil that could be anywhere on the planet is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
C) Fossils of transitional species may have never formed due to environmental conditions,or if they did form,natural processes such as erosion may have destroyed them.
D) The transitional form of any organism is only hypothetical in nature;it never truly existed on the planet and,therefore,could never become a fossil.

Question 15

The Cambrian explosion ___________.

A) caused a lack of air in Earth's atmosphere
B) was caused by an increase in volcanic activity
C) was volcanic in nature
D) increased the diversity of animal life on Earth

Question 16

Why is the fossil record incomplete?

A) Transitional forms of organisms do not exist because evolution constantly forms new organisms from scratch.
B) The remains of organisms form fossils by chance and are later discovered by chance.
C) DNA evidence cannot be obtained from fossils.
D) Evolutionary trends cannot be determined without complete skeletons,which are rare.

Question 17

Which of the following is NOT an example of a fossil?

A) the footprint of an ancient humanlike being
B) an insect preserved in hardened tree sap
C) an imprint of feathers and a skeleton in a rock
D) mummified remains of a saber-tooth tiger

Question 18

Which of the following statements about the fossil record is true?

A) It is useful only for plant species.
B) It is not a useful tool for determining when the organisms found in fossils actually lived.
C) It contains an example of every species that ever lived on Earth.
D) It supports our current understanding of evolution.

Question 19

Which kind of organism makes up the oldest fossil found on Earth?

A) protists
B) animals
C) bacteria
D) plants

Question 20

You are looking at the side of a cliff with many clearly visible layers of rock.In the top layer,you find the fossil of a mouse.In the next layer down,you find the fossil of a frog.Two layers down from that,you find the fossil of a beetle and,in the deepest layer,the fossil of a millipede.This is evidence that _____________.

A) mice evolved before frogs
B) frogs evolved after mice
C) millipedes were the first among these animals to evolve
D) the beetle evolved before millipedes

Question 21

Which of the following does NOT lead to adaptive radiation?

A) mass extinction
B) adaptations that allow an organism to use its environment in new ways
C) migration of a species into a new environment with a number of free ecological niches
D) a species living in a habitat to which it is well adapted

Question 22

During the time of Pangaea,an ancestor of modern crocodiles inhabited the region marked by the star in this map (left in the following figure).

Where would you expect to find fossils of this animal today (the map on the right)?

A) Northern Hemisphere
B) on every continent
C) Africa
D) Antarctica

Question 23

The supercontinent Pangaea began to break up ___________.

A) before there were any dinosaurs
B) after terrestrial organisms had evolved
C) before the existence of land plants
D) before photosynthesis began producing oxygen

Question 24

Mass extinctions cause the loss of many species,no matter how well adapted those species were before the extinction.Why might previous adaptations NOT help a species survive a mass extinction?

A) The rapid environmental changes that cause mass extinctions do not leave the organisms time to adapt.
B) Ongoing continental drift allows more species to interbreed,which lowers the genetic variability available for adaptation.
C) Adaptive radiations are stronger than adaptations.
D) Well-adapted organisms will not be affected by mass extinction;these are the groups that will survive.

Question 25

The most recent mass extinction,which occurred during the Cretaceous period,may have been caused by ______________.

A) extra heat from the sun
B) the pull of the moon on Earth
C) the dinosaurs
D) an asteroid hitting Earth

Question 26

Why might many new species form in the aftermath of a mass extinction?

A) Gene flow among the remaining species would be increased,giving rise to many new genetic recombinations.
B) Changed environments and reduced competition would provide opportunities for new adaptations.
C) New environments would increase mutation rates.
D) Populations of remaining species would expand rapidly and reduce geographic isolation.

Question 27

The following figure shows the number of living taxonomic families that existed on Earth during the last 540 million years.The sudden decreases in family numbers at 445,360,250,200,and 65 million years ago represent Earth's five mass extinction events.Based on these data,which mass extinction had the biggest impact on the overall diversity of life on Earth?

A) 200 million years ago
B) 250 million years ago
C) 360 million years ago
D) 445 million years ago

Question 28

Which of the following statements about continental drift is true?

A) It is the slow movement of the continents over time.
B) It encourages gene flow.
C) It no longer occurs.
D) It has had no effect on speciation.

Question 29

Which of the following is NOT an effect of mass extinctions on the diversity of life?

A) Entire groups of organisms die off,changing the history of life on Earth.
B) Mutation rates in surviving organisms increase greatly.
C) Surviving species experience adaptive radiations.
D) Previously unimportant groups of organisms find new ecological and evolutionary opportunities.

Question 30

Which of the following represents the order in which terrestrial life appeared in the fossil record?

A) millipedes,green plants,amphibians,insects,reptiles
B) millipedes,insects,green plants,reptiles,amphibians
C) green plants,reptiles,millipedes,insects,amphibians
D) green plants,millipedes,insects,amphibians,reptiles

Question 31

The Cambrian explosion resulted in the evolution of more than 17,000 species of an animal known as the trilobite.The shear number of trilobite fossils found in modern times suggests that trilobites were very abundant,perhaps the rulers of the seas.Today,no living descendants of this group exist.What happened?

A) Because trilobites evolved before the first mass extinction,it is possible that one or more of the five mass extinctions could have eventually wiped out the entire group.
B) In order to disappear from the planet entirely,trilobites must have undergone the process of adaptive radiation.
C) It is unlikely that trilobites could have survived the increase in atmospheric oxygen once the process of photosynthesis had evolved.
D) Being so plentiful,trilobites must have been the major food source for terrestrial dinosaurs.The extinction of the trilobite may have caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs.

Question 32

The first group of vertebrates that could complete their life cycle without returning to water was _____________.

A) amphibians
B) reptiles
C) mammals
D) birds

Question 33

Which of the five great extinctions resulted in the largest loss of species?

A) the Triassic extinction
B) the Cretaceous extinction
C) the Permian extinction
D) the Devonian extinction

Question 34

Which of the following has NOT been proposed as a possible cause of mass extinctions?

A) climate change
B) a very large earthquake
C) massive volcanic eruptions
D) changes in sea levels

Question 35

Life evolved in the oceans long before it evolved on land.Which of the following had to occur before organisms were able to live on land?

A) The Earth's landmasses had to become wetter.
B) Organisms had to adapt to the harsh,dry conditions faced by life on land.
C) Animals had to develop internal skeletons and efficient transport mechanisms.
D) The supercontinent Pangaea had to break up into subcontinents.

Question 36

Why did evolutionary biologists rely exclusively on the concept of geologic time to explain macroevolutionary change for such a long time?

A) Large timescales prevent speciation from occurring.
B) Large timescales can accelerate the mutation rate,leading to greater changes.
C) Large timescales actually lead to increasing stability of the genetic material and more consistent gene expression.
D) The large span of Earth's history allows time for large changes in body form to occur;also,biologists were unaware of the underlying genetic mechanisms that can produce rapid change.

Question 37

Continental drift has played a role in all of the following except ________.

A) changing regional climate
B) extinctions
C) reduction of mutation rates in all organisms
D) promoting speciation

Question 38

The leg bones of the first tetrapod (shown in the following diagram)are hypothesized to have evolved from bones in the ____________.

A) legs of an amphibian
B) wings of a bird
C) fins of an aquatic mammal
D) fins of a fish

Question 39

Mass extinctions remove dominant groups of organisms and thus provide new ecological and evolutionary opportunities for groups of organisms that were previously of little importance.These organisms can then fill the now existing niches through the process of ___________.

A) directed mutation
B) cloning
C) mitosis
D) adaptive radiation

Question 40

For insects,could there be a connection between being the first organism to fly and being the most diverse terrestrial organism today?

A) Probably not;terrestrial insects are only so diverse because they have been around so much longer than other animals and have,therefore,had more time to evolve.
B) Yes;the ability to fly between populations decreases gene flow,resulting in rapid speciation.
C) No;only environmental changes can lead to adaptive radiation of a group as large as insects.
D) Maybe;because insects were the first in the air,they had a variety of habitats to explore without competition,which often leads to adaptive radiation.

Question 41

A gene that controls a battery of other genes that are responsible for the development of structures such as a limb during embryological development is called a(n)_____________.

A) limbic gene
B) sex-linked gene
C) homeotic gene
D) epigenetic gene

Question 42

You are studying the relationships between a number of organisms.You begin by cataloging their homologous traits.Organisms A and B share 23 homologous traits.In addition,organisms B and C share 14 homologous traits,while organisms A and C share 11 homologous traits.Based on these preliminary findings,what can you conclude from these data?

A) Organisms B and C are most closely related.
B) Organisms A and C are most closely related.
C) Organisms A and B are most closely related.
D) Organisms A,B,and C are related to each other to similar extents.

Question 43

A mutation in a homeotic gene would NOT be likely to cause which of the following developmental changes in an organism?

A) the development of a fruit fly embryo with legs growing from its head
B) the development of a legless lizard
C) a change in the color of a fruit flies eyes
D) the appearance of an eye on the abdomen of a fruit fly

Question 44

Recent research in developmental biology has shown that the body plans of organisms may be varied as a result of _____________.

A) how and when a particular gene is expressed in the developing embryo
B) the exchange of genetic material between homologous chromosomes
C) genes that exhibit sex linkage
D) adaptive radiation

Question 45

Despite differing significantly in form,chimpanzees and humans have genomes that are nearly identical,since they differ by ____________.

A) 1%
B) only 400 genes
C) 2%
D) 22%

Question 46

Which of the following reflects the order of the Linnaean hierarchy from the highest-level (or most general)to the lowest-level (or most specific)taxon?

A) domain,kingdom,phylum,class,family,order,genus,species
B) species,genus,family,order,class,phylum,kingdom,domain
C) domain,kingdom,phylum,class,order,family,genus,species
D) species,genus,phylum,class,order,family,kingdom,domain

Question 47

The construction of evolutionary trees that illustrate the patterns of species evolution is known as ____________.

A) psychogenetics
B) phylotaxonomy
C) evolutionary developmental biology
D) phylogenetics

Question 48

Which of the following is an example of a human atavistic trait?

A) humans born with tails
B) humans born with hairy pinnae
C) having a widow's peak
D) colorblindness

Question 49

Which of the following is NOT a correct scientific name?

A) Homo sapiens
B) Homo erectus
C) Habilis homo
D) Gallus gallus

Question 50

A node on an evolutionary tree represents ___________.

A) the most immediate ancestor that all lineages share
B) the interrelationships of all individuals within a single species
C) the divergence of an ancestral group into two separate lineages
D) the genetic relationship between individuals of all species

Question 51

The lowest level of classification in the Linnaean hierarchy is the __________.

A) species
B) genus
C) domain
D) phylum

Question 52

Which fish,thought for a long time to be extinct until it appeared in a South African fish market in 1938,is also suspected to be related to the ancestral fish that gave rise to the first tetrapod?

A) the lungfish
B) the coelacanth
C) the coelatroph
D) the golden koi

Question 53

The discipline of taxonomy involves ____________.

A) the description of the relationship between anatomy and physiology
B) the classification of organisms into groups based on morphological or genetic similarities
C) the study of specific atavistic and vestigial characteristics
D) the determination of the morphometric properties of the living world

Question 54

What would happen if PAX6,the homeotic gene that drives eye development in mice and humans,were inserted into a fruit fly embryo that was homozygous for the eyeless allele of the fruit fly gene that controls fruit fly eye development?

A) It would be likely to drive the development of miniature eyes on the fruit fly that shared features of mouse and human eyes.
B) It would be likely to drive the development of miniature mouse eyes on the fruit fly.
C) It would be likely to drive the development of miniature human eyes on the fruit fly.
D) It would be likely to drive the production of reasonably normal fruit fly eyes in the embryo.

Question 55

Which of the following is NOT a taxon?

A) Panthera tigris
B) Carnivora
C) Felidae
D) Cat

Question 56

The similarities retained by two lineages because of their common ancestry are known as ________.

A) heterologous traits
B) homologous traits
C) homozygous traits
D) detritivorous characteristics

Question 57

Which of the following are unique to mammals and the most recent common ancestor of mammals but lacking in nonmammals?

A) fur and teeth
B) fur and mammary glands
C) mammary glands and teeth
D) teeth and an opposable thumb

Question 58

Evolutionary novelties shared by an ancestor and its descendants but not seen in groups that are not direct descendants of that ancestor are known as ___________.

A) common ancestral traits
B) heterologous traits
C) lineally descended characteristics
D) shared derived traits

Question 59

A trait that represents a reversion to an ancestral state is known as a(n)____________.

A) vestigial trait
B) atavistic trait
C) ancestral characteristic
D) homeotypical characteristic

Question 60

If a gene from the coelacanth that drives the development of limbs in the coelacanth embryo was inserted into rats,what would the result likely be?

A) It would likely drive the production of a lobed fin in the rat.
B) It would likely drive production of a limb that is a cross between a normal rat limb and a lobed fin.
C) It would likely drive the production of an almost normal rat limb.
D) It would likely drive the production of no limb in the rat embryo.

Question 61

Scientific advances in the study of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo)have demonstrated that another factor has had as much of an impact as specific alterations in the genes on the macroevolutionary changes in body plans that have been observed through time.This factor is _____________.

Question 62

The diversification of groups of organisms to form new species that can occur after a mass extinction or at other times is called adaptive ___________.

Question 63

The first single-celled organisms arose 3.5 ____________________ years ago.

Question 64

Following each of Earth's five mass extinctions,the diversity of life on Earth,over time,has ____________________ [increased or decreased].

Question 65

Large timescales have played a role in creating the diversity of life that has existed over billions of years on the planet Earth in combination with ______________.

Question 66

The oxygen necessary to support much of life on Earth is a waste product of an important adaptation,the process of ____________________.

Question 67

Many organisms decompose rapidly after death;some organisms have had soft bodies and some areas where organisms died have undergone massive geologic changes.For these reasons,the ____________________ record is incomplete.

Question 68

Among the first organisms to colonize land were descendants of ____________________.

Question 69

Evidence that the Cretaceous mass extinction was created by the impact of an asteroid is the existence,buried under sediments off the coast of Mexico,of a huge ____________________.

Question 70

The morphological and genetic similarities that reflect the evolutionary histories of the organisms being studied by scientists are used to construct evolutionary trees that illustrate the patterns of species evolution.The field within which such studies are conducted is called ___________

Question 71

There is a class of genes that causes the development of structures in embryological development;such genes accomplish this task by controlling the expression of all other genes necessary for the growth of an embryological structure like the limb.Such genes are called ____________________ genes.

Question 72

The earliest forms of life evolved and lived in ____________________.

Question 73

A group of orders is called a(n)____________.

Question 74

After the extinction of the dinosaurs,the stage was set for the eventual evolution of humans by the adaptive radiation of ____________________.

Question 75

Scientists can determine the approximate age of a fossil by using an unstable form of the element uranium,Uranium-235,which has a half-life of 700 million years.Such an unstable form of an element is called a ______________.

Question 76

About 220 million years ago,mammals evolved from ____________________.

Question 77

Mammals branched out to evolve many new species after the extinction of the ___________________.

Question 78

Ninety-five percent of marine invertebrate species went extinct during the mass extinction at the end of the ____________________.

Question 79

If the homeotic genes that control limb development in the fruit fly are expressed in the head region of the fly,instead of developing antennae,the fly builds __________.

Question 80

Mammals were able to evolve to fill some ecological roles that had previously been filled by dinosaurs,when the extinction of dinosaurs brought an end to the ____________________ between these two groups of animals.