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Unit 7
AP Biology Unit 7 Vocabulary- Hunter
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Evolution | The change in the characteristics of a species over several generations and relies on the process of natural selection. |
| Evolutionary Fitness | The reproductive success and reflects how well an organism is adapted to its environment. |
| Natural Selection | The process through which populations of living organisms adapt and change. Individuals in a population are naturally variable, meaning that they are all different in some ways. Some individuals have traits better suited to the environment than others. |
| Selective Pressure | The effect on survival of a species of the sum of all factors, physical and behavioral, inherent and environmental; especially as an inherited trait may marginally effect survival under the influence of these factors. |
| Adaptive Radiation | When a species rapidly adapts to fill available niches in an ecosystem. |
| Biological Species Concept | A group of organisms that can successfully interbreed and produce fertile offspring. |
| Divergent Evolution | The process whereby groups from the same common ancestor evolve and accumulate differences, resulting in the formation of new species. |
| Gradualism | The evolution of new species by gradual accumulation of small genetic changes over long periods of time also : a theory or model of evolution emphasizing this — compare punctuated equilibrium. |
| Punctuated Equilibrium | The idea that drastic evolutionary changes happen in bursts which take place between long periods of little change. |
| Reproductive Isolation | The inability of a species to breed successfully with related species due to geographical, behavioral, physiological, or genetic barriers or differences. |
| Speciation | A process within evolution that leads to the formation of new, distinct species that are re-productively isolated from one another. |
| Ecosystems | A single environment and every living (biotic) organism and non-living (abiotic) factor that is contained within it or characterizes it. It embodies every aspect of a single habitat, including all interactions between its different elements. |
| Extinction | The dying out of a species. It also plays an important role in the evolution of life because it opens up opportunities for new species to emerge. |
| Niche | In ecology, all of the interactions of a species with the other members of its community, including competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism. |
| Species Diversity | The number of species and abundance of each species that live in a particular location. |
| RNA World Hypothesis | It suggests that life on Earth began with a simple RNA molecule that could copy itself without help from other molecules. DNA, RNA, and proteins are central to life on Earth. |
| Convergent Evolution | When different organisms independently evolve similar traits. Biologists call this process when two organisms share characteristics that they didn't jointly inherit from a common ancestor. |
| Bottleneck Effect | An extreme example of genetic drift that happens when the size of a population is severely reduced. Events like natural disasters can decimate a population, killing most individuals and leaving behind a small, random assortment of survivors. |
| Founder Effect | The reduction in genetic variation that results when a small subset of a large population is used to establish a new colony. |
| Genetic Drift | A change in allele frequency in a population, due to a random selection of certain genes. |
| Mutation | When a DNA gene is damaged or changed in such a way as to alter the genetic message carried by that gene. |
| Population | A group of organisms of a species that interbreed and live in the same place at the same time. |
| Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium | A principle stating that the genetic variation in a population will remain constant from one generation to the next in the absence of disturbing factors. |
| Migration | A pattern of behavior in which animals travel from one habitat to another in search of food, better conditions, or reproductive needs. |
| Null Hypothesis | An assumption or proposition where an observed difference between two samples of a statistical population is purely accidental and not due to systematic causes. |
| Fossil | The preserved remains, or traces of remains, of ancient organisms. |
| Isotope | Various forms of an element that have the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons. |
| Morphology | The study of the size, shape, and structure of animals, plants, and microorganisms and of the relationships of their constituent parts. The term refers to the general aspects of biological form and arrangement of the parts of a plant or an animal. |
| Vestigial Structure | Various cells, tissues, and organs in a body which no longer function in the same way the ancestral form of the trait functioned. |
| Cladogram | A branching diagram depicting the successive points of species divergence from common ancestral lines without regard to the degree of deviation. |
| Lineage | Sequences of biological entities connected by ancestry-descent relationships |
| Molecular Clock | A hypothesis that predicts a constant rate of molecular evolution among species. It is also a method of genetic analysis that can be used to estimate evolutionary rates and timescales using data from DNA or proteins. |
| Out-Group | Species or group of species closely related to but not included within a taxon. |
| Phylogenetic Tree | A diagram that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of different species, organisms, or genes from a common ancestor. |
| Phylogeny | A hypothetical relationship between groups of organisms being compared. |
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