Chapter 1 Questions

Front 1

Anton Van Leeuwenhoek made an important contribution to the development of the cell theory. How?

Back 1

He invented more powerful microscopes and was the first to describe the diversity of cells.

Front 2

What does it mean to say that experimental conditions are controlled?

Back 2

All physical conditions except for one are identical for all groups tested.

Front 3

The term evolution means that ______ change through time.

Back 3

Populations

Front 4

What does it mean to say that a characteristic of an organism is heritable?

Back 4

The characteristic can be passed to the offspring.

Front 5

In biology, to what does the term fitness mean?

Back 5

An individual's ability to survive & reproduce.

Front 6

Could both the food competition hypothesis and the sexual competition hypothesis explain why giraffes have long necks? why or why not?

Back 6

Yes, long necks could be advantages for more than one reason.

Front 7

What would researchers have to demonstrate to convince you that they had discovered life on another planet?

Back 7

That the entity they discovered replicates, processes information, acquires and uses energy, is cellular, and that its populations evolve.

Front 8

What did Linnaeus's system of naming organisms ensure?

Back 8

Two different organisms never end up with the same genus and species name.

Front 9

What does it mean to say that a species is adapted to a particular habitat?

Back 9

Over time, traits that increased the fitness of individuals in this habitat became increasingly frequent in the population.

Front 10

Explain how selection occurs during natural selection. What is selected, and why?

Back 10

Individuals with certain traits are selected, in the sense that they produce the most off spring.

Front 11

The following two states explain the logic behind the use of molecular sequence data to estimate evolutionary relationships.

"If the theory of evolution is true, then rRNA sequences should be very similar in closely related organisms but less similar in organisms that are less closely related."

Back 11

Yes, if evolution is defines as "change in the characteristics of a population over time," then those organisms that are most closely related should have experiences less change over time.

Front 12

"On a phylogenetic tree, branches that share a recent common ancestor represents species that are closely related; branches that don't share recent common ancestor represents species that are more distantly related."

Is the logic of these statements sound? Why or why not?

Back 12

On a phylogenetic tree, species with substantially similar rRNA sequences would be diagrammed with a closer common ancestor-one that had the sequences they inherited-than the ancestors shared between species with dissimilar rRNA sequences.

Front 13

Explain why researchers formulate a null hypothesis in addition to a hypothesis when designing an experimental study.

Back 13

A null hypothesis specifies what a researcher should observe when the hypothesis being tested isn't correct.

Front 14

Scientific theory & example

Back 14

A scientific theory is not a guess-it is an idea whose validity can be tested with data.

Ex:Both the cell theory and the theory of evolution have been validated by large bodies of observational and experimental data.

Front 15

Some humans have heritable traits that make them resistant to infections by HIV. In areas of the world where HIV infection rates are high, are human populations evolving? Explain.

Back 15

Yes. The heritable traits that confer resistance to HIV should increase over time.

Front 16

1.1 What does it mean to say something is alive?

Back 16

There is no single, well-accepted definition of life. Instead, biologists point to five characterizes that organism share. Energy, cells, information, replication, & evolution.

Front 17

1.2 The cell theory

Back 17

The cell theory identified the fundamental structural unit common to all life.

Front 18

1.3 The theory of evolution by natural selection

Back 18

The theory of evolution states that all organisms is related by common ancestry.

Front 19

1.3 The theory of evolution by natural selection

Back 19

Natural selection is a well-tested explanation for why species change through time and why they are so well adapted to their habitats.

Front 20

1.4 The tree of life

Back 20

The theory of evolution predicts that all organisms are part of a genealogy of species, and that all species trace their ancestry back to a single common ancestor.

Front 21

1.4 The tree of life

Back 21

To construct this phylogeny, biologists have analyzed the sequences in rRNA and in an array of genetic material found in all cells.

Front 22

1.4 The tree of life

Back 22

A tree of life, based on similarities and differences in these molecules. has three fundamental lineages or domains: the Bacteria, the Archaea, and the Eukarya.

Front 23

1.5 Doing biology

Back 23

Biology is a hypothesis-driven, experimental science.