Bio 100 Fall 2001

Review questions for Quiz #3:

 

What is life? Describe some of the characteristics shared in common by all living things.

 

What are the steps believed to have been necessary to lead up to the "first" cell?

 

What are the three categories of life? What are the differences between them?

 

Describe the lifestyle of the first prokaryote.

What are stromatolites? Why were they so important to the development of varied life on earth?

 

How do past and current conditions on Mars compare to past and current conditions on Earth? Use these comparisons to discuss the possibility that some form of life once existed on Mars. What did the Martian meteorite add to the story?

 

Why is the concept of evolution so important to biology?

 

What were the pieces of "evidence" (both observations and intellectual insights from others) that led Darwin to recognize common descent with modification? That led to his perceiving natural selection?

 

What does the theory of evolution actually state?

 

Be able to describe each of the types of evidence that have made evolution so universally accepted as a theory.

 

Compare and contrast analogous and homologous structures.

 

What is it that actually "evolves"? What is it that natural selection actually acts upon?

 

Be able to describe and/or give examples of the five agents of microevolution. Which of the agents consistently works to adapt organisms to their environment. WHY?

 

Why is it impossible to determine ABSOLUTE evolutionary fitness?

 

Be able to describe and give examples of each of the three modes of natural selection. (You will almost certainly be given a scenario that you have NOT heard in lecture, and you will be asked to decide what type of selection it represents.)

 

Why do some naturally occurring populations of bacteria have genes that confer antibiotic resistance?

 

Why is the following statement incorrect? "When confronted by an antibiotic, bacteria learn to mutate and thus develop antibiotic resistance".

 

What are some human behaviors that have encouraged the directional selection that has led to antibiotic resistance? How can we as consumers reverse the trend towards increasing antibiotic resistance?

 

 

Why is it difficult to define a "species"?

 

Be able to describe and give examples for the different mechanisms of reproductive isolation; be able to differentiate between pre- and post-zygotic mechanisms.

 

Be able to compare and contrast allopatric and sympatric speciation. If given a new scenario not mentioned before in lecture, you may be asked to determine which mode it describes…

 

When is speciation likely to occur? What are the circumstances that lead to adaptive radiation?

 

Why are the cichlids in Lake Victoria the favorite example of evolutionary biologists? (in other words, what are they examples of?)

 

What are the causes and symptoms of malaria and sickle cell disease?  What are the genetics of sickle cell disease?

 

What is balanced polymorphism? Explain how this relates to the maintenance of such a high allele frequency of the HbS allele in Africans and African Americans.

 

 

The following terms have been used in lecture; you should be able to recognize and use or define them:

 

Adaptive radiation

Allele

Allele frequency

Allopatric speciation

Anaerobic

Analogous structures

Archaea

Assortative mating

Bacteria

Biogeography

Biological species concept

Bottleneck effect

Common descent with modification

Directional selection

Disruptive (diversifying) selection

Eukarya

eukaryotes

evolution

evolutionary species concept

founder effect

gene flow

gene pool

generalists

genetic drift

genotype

heterotrophic

homologous structures

hybrid breakdown, inviability, sterility

hydrothermal vents

inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarck)

microevolution

mutation

Natural selection

Nonrandom mating

Phenotype

Postzygotic barrier

population

photosynthetic

prezygotic barrier

prokaryotes

reproductive isolation (all types)

Selective pressure (or force)

Sexual selection

specialists

Species

speciation

Stabilizing selection

Stromatolites

Sympatric speciation

Vestigial structures