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8th Grade Science
Natural Selection Vocabulary
| Definition | Term |
|---|---|
| a trait that makes it more likely that an individual will survive in a specific environment | adaptive trait |
| a related organism from a previous generation | ancestor |
| a way of hiding by looking the same as the background | camouflage |
| an event or process that leads to a result or change | cause |
| a long piece of DNA that contains many genes | chromosome |
| the number of individuals with each trait in a population | distribution |
| a type of molecule that genes and chromosomes are made of | DNA |
| a result or change that happens because of an event or process | effect |
| everything (living and nonliving) that surrounds an organism | environment |
| a characteristic that all members of a species have | feature |
| an instruction for making a protein molecule | gene |
| a specific form of a gene that provides instructions for making a particular protein molecule | gene version |
| a group of individuals born and living at about the same time | generation |
| a graph that uses bars to show how characteristics or values are distributed within a group | histogram |
| to receive genes from a parent | inherit |
| a random change to a gene that sometimes results in a new trait | mutation |
| the process by which the distribution of traits in a population changes over many generations | natural selection |
| a trait that makes it less likely that an individual will survive in a specific environment | non-adaptive trait |
| a young insect that looks somewhat different from the adult | nymph |
| an organism produced as a result of reproduction | offspring |
| living things, such as plants, animals, and bacteria | organisms |
| a group of the same type of organism living in the same area | population |
| an animal that hunts and kills other animals for food | predator |
| an idea about what might happen that is based on what you already know | prediction |
| an animal that is hunted or killed by another animal for food | prey |
| a type of large molecule that performs important functions inside organisms | protein molecule |
| something in the environment that affects an individual’s chances of surviving | selection pressure |
| the process in which two parents pass on their genes to create offspring | sexual reproduction |
| a group of organisms of the same kind (in one or more populations) that do not reproduce with organisms from any other group | species |
| to stay alive | survive |
| a specific characteristic of an individual organism | trait |
| any difference in traits between individual organisms | variation |