Unit Four: Evolution

Unit Four: Evolution
Chapter 22 - Darwin

MULTIPLE CHOICE. Choose the one alternative that best completes the statement or answers the question.
1) What is the name of the person who devised a taxonomic system that used morphological (i.e., anatomical) features as the primary criteria for classifying organisms?
A) Alfred Wallace
B) Carolus Linnaeus
C) Jean Baptiste Lamarck
D) Charles Lyell
E) Charles Darwin
2) Which statement is most consistent with the natural theology that was prevalent in Europe and America during Darwin's life?
A) To love God is to love nature.
B) God is nature.
C) Nature reflects God's intelligent design.
D) God can be discerned only through the study of nature.
E) God is all-natural.
3) On which of the following did Linnaeus base his classification system?
A) the fossil record
B) evolutionary history
C) morphology and anatomy
D) only A and B are correct
E) A, B, and C are correct
4) Catastrophism was Cuvier's attempt to explain
A) evolution.
B) the origin of new species.
C) the fossil record.
D) natural selection.
E) uniformitarianism.


5) What was the prevailing notion prior to the time of Lyell and Darwin?
A) The Earth is millions of years old and populations gradually change.
B) The Earth is 6,000 years old and populations are unchanging.
C) The Earth is 6,000 years old and populations gradually change.
D) The Earth is millions of years old and populations rapidly change.
E) The Earth is millions of years old and populations are unchanging.
6) During a study session about evolution, one of your fellow students remarks, "The giraffe stretched its neck while reaching for higher leaves; its offspring inherited longer necks as a result." Which statement most accurately corrects the student's misconception?
A) Disuse of an organ may lead to its eventual disappearance.
B) Only favorable adaptations have survival value.
C) Spontaneous mutations can result in the appearance of new traits.
D) Overproduction of offspring leads to a struggle for survival.
E) Characteristics acquired during an organism's life are not passed on through genes.
7) The statement "Improving the intelligence of an adult through education will result in that adult's descendants being born with a greater native intelligence" is an example of
A) uniformitarianism.
B) Lamarckism.
C) natural theology.
D) scala naturae.
E) Darwinism.
8) Increased UV irradiation causes the skin of humans to become more darkly pigmented over a period of days. The notion that the offspring of such tanned individuals should consequently inherit darkened skin from their parents is consistent with the ideas of
A) Charles Lyell.
B) Carolus Linnaeus.
C) Jean Baptiste Lamarck.
D) Charles Darwin.
E) Alfred Wallace.


9) Darwin's mechanism of natural selection required long time spans in order to modify species. From whom did Darwin get the concept of the Earth's ancient age?
A) Charles Lyell
B) Alfred Wallace
C) Thomas Malthus
D) Georges Cuvier
E) John Henslow
10) The naturalist who synthesized a concept of natural selection independently of Darwin was
A) Charles Lyell.
B) Alfred Wallace.
C) Gregor Mendel.
D) Thomas Malthus.
E) Rev. John Henslow.
11) Linnaeus' concept of taxonomy is that the more closely two organisms resemble each other, the more closely related they are in a classification scheme. In evolutionary terms, the more closely related two organisms are, the
A) more similar they are in size.
B) more similar their habitats are.
C) more recently they shared a common ancestor.
D) less likely they are to be related to fossil forms.
E) less similar their DNA sequences are.
12) Darwin's mechanism of evolution differed from Lamarck's by proposing that
A) species are not fixed.
B) evolution leads to adaptation.
C) life on Earth has had a long evolutionary history.
D) inherent variations in the population are more important in evolution than variations acquired during individual lifetimes.
E) life on Earth did not evolve abruptly but rather through a gradual process of minute changes.
13) Natural selection is based on all of the following except
A) the fittest individuals leave the most offspring.
B) there is differential reproductive success within populations.
C) populations tend to produce more individuals than the environment can support.
D) use or disuse of organs during one generation causes modifications of these same organs in subsequent generations.
E) variation exists within populations.
14) All of the following statements are part of the Darwin-Wallace theory of natural selection except
A) on average, the best adapted individuals leave more offspring.
B) natural selection results from differential success in reproduction among members of a population.
C) characteristics that are acquired during the life of an individual are passed on to offspring.
D) organisms tend to increase in numbers at a rate more rapid than the environment can support.
E) heritable variations occur in natural populations.
15) Insects with mutations that prevent flight (e.g., the "vestigial wing" mutation in fruit flies) usually can't survive long in nature. But in four of the following environments, flightlessness could be selected for. Which environment should favor the survival of fruit flies that can actually fly?
A) a cage with slippery walls that insects can't climb and an electrified screen on top that electrocutes insects that touch it
B) a swamp full of frogs that can see and catch flying insects better than crawling insects
C) a cage in which food cannot be reached by sole use of the legs
D) a forest full of bats that catch and eat insects while in flight
E) an island where stiff winds blow some flying insects out to sea, only to drown











Chapter 23 - Evolution of Populations
MULTIPLE CHOICE. Choose the one alternative that best completes the statement or answers the question.
1) What is the most important missing evidence or observation in Darwin's theory of 1859?
A) evidence of the overproduction of offspring
B) observation that competition exists in populations
C) the source of genetic variation
D) observation that variation is common in populations
E) evidence that some organisms became extinct
2) Which of the following is the unit of evolution? In other words, which of the following can evolve in the Darwinian sense?
A) species                                                                                                                                 B) gene                                                                                                                                      C) chromosome                                                                                                                          D) individual                                                                                                                              E) population
3) What effect do sexual processes (meiosis and fertilization) have on the allelic frequencies in a population?
A) They tend to increase the frequencies of deleterious alleles and decrease the frequencies of advantageous ones.
B) They tend to selectively combine favorable alleles into the same zygote but do not change allelic frequencies.
C) They tend to reduce the frequencies of deleterious alleles and increase the frequencies of advantageous ones.
D) They tend to increase the frequency of new alleles and decrease the frequency of old ones.
E) They have no effect on allelic frequencies.





Use the following information to answer the questions below. A large population of laboratory animals has been allowed to breed randomly for a number of generations. After several generations, 49 percent of the animals display a recessive trait (aa), the same percentage as at the beginning of the breeding program. The rest of the animals show the dominant phenotype, with heterozygotes indistinguishable from the homozygous dominants.
4) What is the most reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that the frequency of the recessive trait (aa) has not changed over time?
A) There has been a high rate of mutation of allele A to allele a.
B) The population is undergoing genetic drift.
C) There has been sexual selection favoring allele a.
D) The two phenotypes are about equally adaptive under laboratory conditions.
E) The genotype AA is lethal.
5) What is the estimated frequency of allele a in the gene pool?
A) 0.51                                                                                                                                        B) 0.49                                                                                                                                            C) 0.70                                                                                                                                           D) 0.30                                                                                                                                      E) 0.07
6) What proportion of the population is probably heterozygous (Aa) for this trait?
A) 0.07                                                                                                                                          B) 0.42                                                                                                                                             C) 0.51                                                                                                                                        D) 0.09                                                                                                                                     E) 0.21
7) All of the following are criteria for maintaining a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium involving two alleles except
A) gene flow from other populations must be zero.
B) there should be no natural selection.
C) the frequency of all genotypes must be equal.
D) matings must be random.
E) populations must be large.


8) In a population that is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of the allele a is 0.3. What is the percentage of the population that is homozygous for this allele?
A) 30                                                                                                                                                               B) 9                                                                                                                                                C) 3                                                                                                                                          D) 21                                                                                                                                         E) 42
9) In a population that is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of the allele a is 0.3. What is the percentage of the population that is heterozygous for this allele?
A) 30                                                                                                                                          B) 9                                                                                                                                                   C) 3                                                                                                                                        D) 42                                                                                                                                                 E) 21
10) In a Hardy-Weinberg population, the frequency of the a allele is 0.4. What is the frequency of individuals with Aa genotype?
A) 0.16
B) 0.20
C) 0.60
D) 0.48
E) cannot tell from the information provided
11) In a population with two alleles, A and a, the frequency of a is 0.6. What would be the frequency of heterozygotes if the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?
A) 0.40                                                                                                                                          B) 0.64                                                                                                                                                 C) 0.16                                                                                                                                                  D) 0.36                                                                                                                                                           E) 0.48
12) Most copies of harmful recessive alleles in a population are carried by individuals that are
A) heterozygous for the allele.
B) polymorphic.
C) haploid.
D) homozygous for the allele.
E) afflicted with the disorder caused by the allele.
The following questions refer to this information: In the year 2500, five male space colonists and five female space colonists from Earth settle on an uninhabited Earthlike planet in the Andromeda galaxy. The colonists and their offspring randomly mate for generations. All ten of the original colonists had free ear lobes, and two are heterozygous for that trait. The allele for free ear lobes is dominant to the allele for attached ear lobes.
13) What is the allele frequency in the founding population?
A) 0.2 a, 0.8 A B) 0.8 a, 0.2 A C) 0.5 a, 0.5 A D) 0.4 a, 0.6 A E) 0.1 a, 0.9 A
14) If one assumes that Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium applies to the population of colonists on this planet, about how many people will have attached ear lobes when the planet's population reaches 10,000?
A) 800 B) 400 C) 10,000 D) 100 E) 1,000
15) If four of the original colonists died before they produced offspring, the ratios of genotypes could be quite different in the subsequent generations. This is an example of
A) diversifying selection.
B) diploidy.
C) genetic drift.
D) stabilizing selection.
E) gene flow.