Bio 2970 Exam 2

Lewinton's Two Threats to Evolutionary Theory

Which threat to evolutionary theory expands the explanatory scheme to account for human culture and ideas?

The assumption that the laws of chemistry and physics have been constant throughtout Earth's history

The assumption that we can use familiar geological processes to explain past events.

The hypothesis that geological change occurs in small increments that accumulate over time to produce large changes.

Dynamic steady state

Darwinism + chromosomal theory of inheritance

Thomas Huxley's prescription that Darwin's theories should be subjected to "active doubt"

The simplest hypothesis is the best working hypothesis

Rational explanation based on measurable natural phenomena

Scientists must describe both the volitional (subjective) and cognitonal (objective) aspects of measurement.

The biological world is neither constant nor perpetually cycling but is steadily and perhaps directionally changing

The smallest unit of biological complexity that evolves

All our plants and animals have descended from some one form into which life was first breathed.

Ancestor-descendant populations through time.

Separate lineages accumulate differences from each other and from their common ancestor

The structure of evolutionary history is a branching tree of lineages

Haeckel's Biogenetic Law

Assumptions of Haeckel's Biogenetic Law

Evolution of new characters restricted to preadult stages

Evolutionary change in developmental rates and timing

Evolutionary change in the physical location of a developmental process

Characteristic semi-autonomous patterns of gene expression and cellular proliferation and differentiation

Owen defined it as the same organ in different organisms under every variety of form and function

Forms derived from an equivalent characteristic of a common evolutionary ancestor

A group of two or more species/lineages that includes the most recent common ancestor of all members of the group and all of its descendants; diagnosed by the sharing of homologies

Shared derived character

Branches denote the nested hierarchy of clades as diagnosed by synapomorphies

Branches denote historical evolutionary lineages

Character similarity that does not represent common ancestry

Type of homoplasy in which lineages derive from their common ancestor, but not from each other

Type of homoplasy in which there is an evolutionary return to an ancestral character formerly changed or lost

Type of homoplasy that explains the origin of superficially similar features by dissimilar evolutionary processes

An analytical procedure in which genetic distances for pairwise comparisons of taxa are put in matrices and used to infer phylogenetic trees

An analytical procedure for inferring phylogeny in which fitting a statistical model of base substitution replaces the parsimony method

Geographic splitting of a population followed by evolutionary divergence of the separated parts

Geographic isolation of populations precedes evolution of species-level differences

Mayr's term for a reproductive community of populations (reproductively isolated from others) that occupies a specific niche in nature

Set of resources actually or potentially used by a population