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Unit 7
AP Biology Unit 7 Vocabulary - Cruz
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Evolution | descent with modification; the idea that living species are descendants of ancestral species that were different from the present day ones; also defined more narrowly as the change in the genetic composition of a population from generation to generation. |
| Evolutionary Fitness | how well a species is able to survive and reproduce in its environment. Charles Darwin outlined the mechanisms of how species change, by natural selection and sexual selection. |
| Natural Selection | A process in which individuals that have certain inherited traits tend to survive and reproduce at higher rates than other individuals because of those traits. |
| Selective Pressure | any reason for organisms with certain phenotypes to have either a survival benefit or disadvantage. |
| Adaptive Radiation | Period of evolutionary change in which groups of organisms form many new species whose adaptations allow them to fill different ecological roles in their communities. |
| Biological Species Concept | Definition of a species as a group of populations whose members have the potential to interbreed in nature and produce viable, fertile offspring, but do not produce viable, fertile offspring with members of other such groups |
| Divergent Evolution | the accumulation of differences between closely related populations within a species, leading to speciation. |
| Gradualism | the hypothesis that evolution proceeds chiefly by the accumulation of gradual changes |
| Punctuated Equilibrium | In the fossil record , long periods of apparent stasis , in which a species undergoes little or no morphological change , interrupted by relatively brief periods of sudden change |
| Reproductive Isolation | The existence of biological factors ( barriers) that impede members of two species from producing viable , fertile offspring |
| Speciation | an evolutionary process in which one species splits into two or more species. |
| Ecosystems | all the organisms in a given area as well as the abiotic factors with which they interact; one or more communities and the physical environment around them |
| Extinction | the dying out of a species |
| Niche | the role an organism plays in a community |
| Species Diversity | the number and relative abundance of species in a biological community |
| RNA World Hypothesis | suggests that life on Earth began with a simple RNA molecule that could copy itself. |
| Convergent Evolution | the evolution of similar features in independent evolutionary lineages |
| Bottleneck Effect | genetic drift that occurs when the size of a population is reduced, as by a natural disaster or human actions. Typically, the surviving population is no longer genetically representative of the original population. |
| Founder Effect | genetic drift that occurs when a few individuals become isolated from a larger population and form a new population whose gene pool composition is not reflective of that of the original population. |
| Genetic Drift | a process in which chance events cause unpredictable fluctuations in alle frequencies from one generation to the next. Effects of genetic drift are most pronounced in small populations. |
| Mutation | a change in the nucleotide sequence of an organism's DNA or in the DNA or RNA of a virus. |
| Population | a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same area and interbreed, producing fertile offspring. |
| Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium | the principle that frequencies of alleles and genotypes in a population remain constant from generation to generation, provided that only Mendelian segregation and recombination of alleles are at work. |
| Migration | a regular, long-distance change in location. |
| 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 | a preserved remnant or impression of an organism that lived in the past |
| Isotope | one of several atomic forms of an element, each with the same number of protons but a different number of neutrons, thus differing in atomic mass. |
| Morphology | the branch of biology that deals with the form of living organisms, and with relationships between their structures |
| Vestigial Structure | a featured organism that is a historical remnant of a structure that served a function in the organism's ancestor |
| Cladogram | a branching diagram showing the cladistic relationship between a number of species. |
| Lineage | a sequence of species each of which is considered to have evolved from its predecessor. |
| Molecular Clock | a method for estimating the time required for a given amount of evolutionary change, based on the observation that some regions of genomes evolve at constant rates. |
| Out-Group | a species or group of species from an evolutionary lineage that is known to have diverged before the lineage that contains the group of species being studied |
| Phylogenetic Tree | a branching diagram that represents a hypothesis about evolutionary history of a group of organisms. |
| Phylogeny | the evolutionary history of species or group of related species. |
Created by:
evelyncruz
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