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Chapter 10
Principles of Evolution
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| evolution | the process of biological change by which descendants come to differ from their ancestors |
| species | a group of organisms so similar to one another that they can reproduce and have fertile offspring |
| fossil | traces of organisms that existed in the past |
| catastrophism | this theory states that natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions have happened often during Earth's long history |
| gradualism | slow changes over a long period of time |
| uniformitarianism | this theory states that the geologic processes that shape Earth are uniform through time |
| variation | the difference in a physical traits of an individual from those of other individuals in the group to which it belongs |
| adaptation | a feature that allows an organism to better survive in its environment |
| artificial selection | the process by which humans change a species by breeding it for certain traits |
| heritability | the ability of a trait to be passed down from one generation to the next |
| natural selection | a mechanism by which individuals that have inherited beneficial adaptation produce more offspring on average than do other individuals |
| population | all the individuals of a species that live in an area |
| fitness | a measure of the ability to survive and produce more offspring relative to other members of the population in a given environment |
| biogeography | the study of the distribution of organisms around the world |
| homologous structure | features that are similar in structure but appear in different organisms and have different functions |
| analogous structure | structures that perform a similar function but are not similar in origin |
| vestigial structure | are remnants or organs or structures that had a function in an early ancestor |
| paleontology | the study of fossils or extinct organisms |
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