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Ch. 23, 24, 26
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| uniformitarianism | the processes at work today operate the same as those in the4 past (usually referring to geologic processes) |
| essentialism | |
| fossil record | species look different in some rock layers than other suggesting that they had changed |
| intraspecific variability | you can look at a species at one point in time and see a lot of variation |
| jean-baptise lamarck | person who published the first formalized theory of evolution |
| lamarckism | inheritance of acquired characteristics |
| adaptation | traits/characteristics that increase fitness relative to individuals lacking them |
| parent-offspring regression | plots phenotypic traits of offspring against those of parents |
| microevolution | we can directly observe heritable changes in populations within our lifetime |
| vestigial structure | useless or rudimentary body part that has a function in a closely related or ancestral species (phylogenetic inertia) |
| law succession | extant forms in certain region look most like extinct forms from that same region |
| ring species | connected series of populations where each adjacent neighborhood can interbreed but the ends are too dissimilar to breed |
| homology | similarity between species as a result of common ancestry (despite differences in function) |
| molecular homology | |
| molecular clock | differences in DNA used to estimate time of divergence between groups |
| convergent evolution | similarity among relatively unrelated species due to similar selection pressures, not common ancestry |
| reversal | a reversion from derived trait to the ancestral version |
| parallel evolution | development of similar specializations in closely related species that were absent in the ancestor |