This guide is intended to help you focus your efforts in studying for our upcoming exam. The exam will be open notes, so I suggest that you spend a good amount of time making sure that your notes are well-organized, so you will be able to find information as you need it.
Origin of Life on Earth
- Chapter 25 Review (pages 550 – 551)
- What is macroevolution? How does it differ from microevolution?
- How does the fossil record help us understand macroevolution?
- What were the observation that led to the concept of species? Why are early definitions incomplete?
- What is a more modern definition of species?
- What is hybridization, and how does it muddy the concept of species?
- What were the conditions on early Earth? How does this relate to the experiment performed by Miller and Urey? What were the findings of their experiment?
- How might simple cells have developed?
- Review the geologic time scale, in particular the four time periods we looked at in lecture.
Charles Darwin and Natural Selection
- What was the purpose of the 5-year voyage Darwin took on The Beagle? What were Darwin’s roles on this voyage?
- How did evidence from the fossil record help Darwin formulate his ideas about natural selection?
- How did the wildlife he saw in the Galapagos Islands and the mainland nearby help Darwin formulate his idea about natural selection?
- What other scientist also came up with natural selection independently?
- What are the Four Pillars of Natural Selection?
What is an adaptation? - What is fitness, in evolutionary terms?
- Understand and be able to explain an example of the process of natural selection (one from class – the mice – and one that you have devised on your own)
Phylogeny
- Chapter 26 Review (page 571 – 572)
- What is the field of systematics? How does this relate to taxonomy?
- What is the goal of taxonomy and phylogenetic trees?
- Know the hierarchical categories used in taxonomy.
- What does it mean to say that a phylogeny is a hypothesis?
- Be able to read and interpret a phylogenetic diagram, including understanding branch points, sister taxa, and how to interpret diagrams drawn in various orientations.
- Understand the difference between homology and analogy/covergence.
- Understand parsimony and likelihood.
Fossil Record
- What is a fossil? How did they provide the earliest evidence of evolution?
- How can we determine the relative age of fossils using rock strata?
- What is a body fossil? A trace fossil?
- What is the process by which fossils may be created?
- What are transitional fossils, and why are they important to our understanding of evolutionary patterns over time? Know the examples discussed in class.
- How does absolute dating differ from relative dating? How do we determine the absolute age of a relatively young fossil? An extremely old fossil?
- Understand why the fossil record is incomplete, and the types of organisms that it is biased in favor of.
- What is a mass extinction? How does this relate to adaptive radiation?