|
1) Blue-footed boobies have webbed feet and are comically clumsy when they walk on land. Evolutionary scientists view these feet as
A) an example of a trait that is poorly adapted.
B) the outcome of a tradeoff: webbed feet perform poorly on land, but are very helpful in diving for food.
C) an example of a trait that has not evolved.
D) a curiosity that has little to teach us regarding evolution.
E) one of the unsolvable mysteries of nature.
|
Answer: B Topic: Opening Essay Skill: Application
|
|
2) The core theme of biology is
A) taxonomy.
B) genetics.
C) ecology.
D) evolution.
E) metabolism.
|
Answer: D Topic: Opening Essay Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
3) Aristotle believed that
A) species evolve through natural selection and other mechanisms.
B) an individual’s use of a body part causes it to further evolve.
C) species are fixed (permanent) and perfect.
D) the best evidence for change within species is seen in fossils.
E) no two individual organisms are alike and all types of organisms are equally valuable.
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.1 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
4) Darwin found that some of the species on the Galápagos islands resembled species of the South American mainland
A) less than they resembled animals on ecologically similar but distant islands.
B) more than they resembled animals on ecologically similar but distant islands.
C) less than they resembled animals in Europe.
D) less than they resembled animals from Australia.
E) very closely; in most cases, the species from the mainland and the islands were identical.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.1 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
5) Which of the following statements would Darwin have disagreed with?
A) Species change over time.
B) Living species have arisen from earlier life forms.
C) Modern species arose through a process known as "descent with modification."
D) Descent with modification occurs through inheritance of acquired characteristics.
E) Descent with modification occurs by natural selection.
|
Answer: D Topic: Opening Essay, 13.1, 13.2 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
6) Lyell’s book Principles of Geology, which Darwin read on board the H.M.S. Beagle, argued in favor of which of the following concepts?
A) Earth’s surface is shaped mainly by occasional catastrophic events.
B) Earthquakes were less important than sedimentary processes in creating the landscape of South America.
C) Meteorite impacts may have been a major cause of periodic mass extinctions.
D) Earth’s surface is shaped by natural forces that act gradually and are still acting.
E) The processes that shape Earth today are very different from those that were at work in the past.
|
Answer: D Topic: 13.1 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
7) Who developed a theory of evolution almost identical to Darwin’s?
A) Lyell
B) Wallace
C) Aristotle
D) Lamarck
E) Mendel
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.1 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
8) During the 1950s, a scientist named Lysenko tried to solve the food shortages in the Soviet Union by breeding wheat that could grow in Siberia. He theorized that if individual wheat plants were exposed to cold, they would develop additional cold tolerance and pass it to their offspring. Based on the ideas of artificial and natural selection, do you think this project worked as planned?
A) Yes, the wheat probably evolved better cold tolerance over time through inheritance of acquired characteristics.
B) No, because Lysenko took his wheat seeds straight to Siberia instead of exposing them incrementally to cold.
C) No, because there was no process of selection based on inherited traits. Lysenko assumed that exposure could induce a plant to develop additional cold tolerance and that this tolerance would be passed to the plant’s offspring.
D) No, because Lysenko used wheat varieties that had lost their cold tolerance as a result of disuse.
E) Yes, because this is generally the method used by plant breeders to develop new crops.
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.2 Skill: Application
|
|
9) Broccoli, cabbages, and brussels sprouts all descend from the same wild mustard and can still interbreed. These varieties were produced by
A) speciation.
B) artificial selection.
C) natural selection.
D) genetic drift.
E) inheritance of acquired characteristics.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.2 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
10) Which of the following best expresses the concept of natural selection?
A) differential reproductive success based on inherited characteristics
B) inheritance of acquired characteristics
C) change in response to need
D) a process of constant improvement, leading eventually to perfection
E) survival of the fittest
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.2 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
11) Which of the following assumptions or observations contradicts Darwin’s idea of natural selection?
A) Whether an organism survives and reproduces is almost entirely a matter of random chance.
B) Heritable traits that promote successful reproduction should gradually become more common in a population.
C) Populations produce more offspring than their environment can support.
D) Organisms compete for limited resources.
E) Organisms vary in heritable ways.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.2 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
12) Which of the following thinkers argued that organisms tend to produce many more offspring than the environment can support, leading to a struggle for existence, an argument that later influenced Charles Darwin’s ideas of natural selection?
A) Aristotle
B) Charles Lyell
C) Thomas Malthus
D) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
E) Gregor Mendel
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.2 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
13) A dog breeder wishes to develop a breed that does not bark. She starts with a diverse mixture of dogs. Generation after generation, she allows only the quietest dogs to breed. After 30 years of work she has a new breed of dog with interesting traits, but on average, the dogs still bark at about the same rate as other dog breeds. Which of the following would be a logical explanation for her failure?
A) There is no variation for the trait (barking).
B) The tendency to bark is not a heritable trait.
C) The selection was artificial, not natural, so it did not produce evolutionary change.
D) There was no selection (differential reproductive success) related to barking behavior.
E) She did not breed enough of the frequently barking dogs to obtain the desired result.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.2 Skill: Application
|
|
14) Which of the following statements regarding natural selection is false?
A) Natural selection is more of an editing process than a creative mechanism.
B) Natural selection depends on the local environment at the current time.
C) Natural selection starts with the creation of new alleles that are directed toward improving an organism’s fitness.
D) Natural selection and evolutionary change can occur in a short period of time (a few generations).
E) Natural selection can be observed working in organisms alive today.
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.3 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
15) Which of the following would prevent an organism from becoming part of the fossil record when it dies?
A) It is fully decomposed by bacteria and fungi.
B) It is buried in fine sediments at the bottom of a lake.
C) It gets trapped in sap.
D) It falls into an acid bog.
E) It is frozen in ice.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.4 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
16) Which of the following statements regarding the currently available fossil record is false?
A) The currently available fossil record shows that the earliest fossils of life are about 3.5 billion years old.
B) The currently available fossil record shows that younger strata were laid down on top of older strata.
C) The currently available fossil record shows that single-celled eukaryotes appeared before multicellular eukaryotes.
D) The currently available fossil record documents gradual evolutionary changes that link one group of organisms to
another.
E) The currently available fossil record shows that the first life forms were eukaryotes.
|
Answer: E Topic: 13.4 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
17) Which of the following disciplines has found evidence for evolution based on the native distributions (locations) of living species?
A) molecular biology
B) comparative anatomy
C) biogeography
D) paleontology
E) embryology
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.5 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
18) Humans share several features with salamanders. Certain genes and proteins are nearly identical between the two species; both species have four limbs with a similar skeletal structure; the species’ early embryos are very similar; and where the salamander has a functional tail, humans have a vestigial tailbone. In evolutionary terms, these are examples of
A) biogeographic similarity.
B) homology.
C) independently acquired characteristics.
D) adaptation by natural selection.
E) coincidental similarity.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.5 Skill: Application
|
|
19) Which of the following represents a pair of homologous structures?
A) the wing of a bat and the scales of a fish
B) the wing of a bat and the flipper of a whale
C) the antennae of an insect and the eyes of a bird
D) the feathers of a bird and the wing membrane of a bat
E) the wing of a bat and the wing of a butterfly
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.5 Skill: Application
|
|
20) Deep branch points near the base, or trunk, of an evolutionary tree represent ________, while branch points near the tips of the branches represent ________.
A) relatively recent common ancestors . . . relatively ancient common ancestors
B) relatively ancient common ancestors . . . relatively recent common ancestors
C) organisms that share homologous structures . . . organisms that do not share any homologous structures
D) organisms with relatively simple traits . . . organisms with very complex traits
E) complex organisms . . . simpler organisms
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.6 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
21) Darwin was the first person to draw an evolutionary tree, a diagram that represents
A) records of breeding in domesticated animals.
B) records of lineages in humans (also known as a family tree).
C) final, factually established evolutionary relationships among different groups of organisms.
D) evidence-based hypotheses regarding our understanding of patterns of evolutionary descent.
E) groupings of organisms based on overall similarity.
|
Answer: D Topic: 13.6 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
22) A population is
A) a group of individuals of the same species living in the same place at the same time.
B) all individuals of a species, regardless of location or time period in which they live.
C) a group of individuals of different species living in the same place at the same time.
D) a group of individuals of a species plus all of the other species with which they interact.
E) a group of species that share a common characteristic.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.7 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
23) Microevolution, or evolution at its smallest scale, occurs when
A) an individual’s traits change in response to environmental factors.
B) a geographic area is altered by erosion, volcanic eruptions, or other geological forces.
C) a community of organisms changes due to the extinction of several dominant species.
D) a new species arises from an existing species.
E) a population’s allele frequencies change over a span of generations.
|
Answer: E Topic: 13.7 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
24) The ultimate source of all new alleles is
A) mutation in parent cells (asexual organisms) or in cells that produce gametes (sexual organisms).
B) any form of mutation, regardless of the cell type.
C) chromosomal duplication.
D) genetic drift.
E) natural selection.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.8 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
25) In the Hardy-Weinberg equation, the frequency of homozygous dominant individuals in a population is equal to
A) q or p.
B) p2.
C) 2pq.
D) q2.
E) 2p.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.9 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
26) Which of the following terms represents the frequency of heterozygotes in a population that is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?
A) p
B) q
C) 2pq
D) q2
E) p2
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.9 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
27) Which of the following conditions would tend to make the Hardy-Weinberg equation more accurate for predicting the genotype frequencies of future generations in a population of a sexually reproducing species?
A) a small population size
B) little gene flow with surrounding populations
C) a tendency on the part of females to mate with the healthiest males
D) frequent interbreeding with individuals from a second population with different values of p and q
E) mutations that alter the gene pool
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.9 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
28) Imagine that you are studying a very large population of moths that is isolated from gene flow. A single gene controls wing color. Half of the moths have white-spotted wings (genotype WW or Ww) and half of the moths have plain brown wings (ww). There are no new mutations, individuals mate randomly, and there is no natural selection on wing color. How will p, the frequency of the dominant allele, change over time?
A) p will increase; the dominant allele will eventually take over and become most common in the population.
B) p will neither increase nor decrease; it will remain more or less constant under the conditions described.
C) p will decrease because of genetic drift.
D) p will increase initially, then decrease until the W allele vanishes from the population.
E) p will fluctuate rapidly and randomly because of genetic drift.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.9 Skill: Application
|
|
29) The recessive allele of a gene causes cystic fibrosis. For this gene among Caucasians, p = 0.98. If a Caucasian population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium with respect to this gene, what proportion of babies is born homozygous recessive, and therefore suffers cystic fibrosis?
A) 0.022 = 0.0004
B) 0.02
C) 0.982 = 0.9604
D) 2(0.02 × 0.98) = 0.0392
E) 0.98
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.10 Skill: Application
|
|
30) Genetic drift resulting from a disaster that drastically reduces population size is called
A) natural selection.
B) gene flow.
C) the bottleneck effect.
D) nonrandom mating.
E) the founder effect.
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.11 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
31) In populations of the greater prairie chicken in Illinois, genetic diversity was
A) lost through mutation and restored by natural selection.
B) lost through genetic drift and restored by natural selection.
C) lost through gene flow and restored by mutation.
D) lost through genetic drift and restored by gene flow.
E) lost through directional selection and restored by balancing selection.
|
Answer: D Topic: 13.11 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
32) A population of 1,000 birds exists on a small Pacific island. Some of the birds are yellow, a characteristic determined by a recessive allele. The others are green, a characteristic determined by a dominant allele. A hurricane on the island kills most of the birds from this population. Only ten remain, and those birds all have yellow feathers. Which of the following statements is true?
A) Assuming that no new birds come to the island and no mutations occur, future generations of this population will
contain both green and yellow birds.
B) The hurricane has caused a population bottleneck and a loss of genetic diversity.
C) This situation illustrates the principle of adaptive radiation.
D) This situation illustrates the effect of a mutation event.
E) The ten remaining birds will mate only with each other, and this will contribute to gene flow in the population.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.11 Skill: Application
|
|
33) Thirty people are selected for a long-term mission to colonize a planet many light years away from Earth. The mission is successful and the population rapidly grows to several hundred individuals. However, certain genetic diseases are unusually common in this group, and their gene pool is quite different from that of the Earth population they have left behind. Which of the following phenomena has left its mark on this population?
A) founder effect
B) bottleneck effect
C) gene flow
D) high rates of mutation
E) natural selection
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.11 Skill: Application
|
|
34) Genetic differences between populations tend to be reduced by
A) gene flow.
B) mutation.
C) the founder effect.
D) the bottleneck effect.
E) natural selection.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.11 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
35) Which sentence best describes the true nature of natural selection?
A) Survival of the fittest.
B) Only the strongest survive.
C) The strong eliminate the weak in the race for survival.
D) Organisms change by random chance.
E) Heritable traits that promote reproduction become more frequent in a population from one generation to the next.
|
Answer: E Topic: 13.12 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
36) Which of the following will tend to produce adaptive changes in populations?
A) genetic drift
B) gene flow
C) mutation
D) natural selection
E) the founder effect
|
Answer: D Topic: 13.12 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
37) An elk herd is observed over many generations. Most of the full-grown bull elk have antlers of nearly the same size, although a few have antlers that are significantly larger or smaller than this average size. The average antler size remains constant over the generations. Which of the following effects probably accounts for this situation?
A) directional selection
B) stabilizing selection
C) a bottleneck effect that resulted in low genetic diversity
D) a founder effect
E) a high rate of gene flow
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.13 Skill: Application
|
|
38) After a copper smelter begins operation, local populations of plants downwind of the plant begin to adapt to the resulting air pollution. Scientists document, for example, that the acid tolerance of several plant species has increased significantly in the polluted area. This is an example of a response to
A) stabilizing selection.
B) disruptive selection.
C) directional selection.
D) genetic drift.
E) heterozygote advantage.
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.13 Skill: Application
|
|
39) A rabbit population consists of animals that are either very dark on top or very light on top. The color pattern is not related to sex. No rabbit shows intermediate coloration (medium darkness). This pattern might result from
A) disruptive selection.
B) directional selection.
C) stabilizing selection.
D) sexual selection.
E) random mating.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.13 Skill: Application
|
|
40) Large antlers in male elk, which are used for battles between males, are a good example of a trait favored by
A) intersexual selection.
B) intrasexual selection.
C) disruptive selection.
D) directional selection.
E) stabilizing selection.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.14 Skill: Application
|
|
41) Mate-attracting features such as the bright plumage of a male peacock result from
A) intersexual selection.
B) intrasexual selection.
C) disruptive selection.
D) directional selection.
E) stabilizing selection.
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.14 Skill: Application
|
|
42) A woman struggling with a bacterial illness is prescribed a month’s supply of a potent antibiotic. She takes the antibiotic for about two weeks and feels much better. Should she save the remaining two-week supply, or should she continue taking the drug?
A) She should save the drug for later, because if she keeps taking it the bacteria will evolve resistance.
B) She should save the drug for use the next time the illness strikes.
C) She should save the drug because antibiotics are in short supply and she may need it to defend herself against a
bioterrorism incident.
D) She should continue taking the drug because otherwise the bacteria will evolve by genetic drift.
E) She should continue taking the drug until her immune system can completely eliminate the infection. Otherwise the
remaining bacteria in her system may recover, and they will probably be resistant.
|
Answer: E Topic: 13.15-Evolution Connection Skill: Application
|
|
43) If you had to choose, where would you rather get infected with a serious bacterial disease?
A) In a hospital, where most of the bacteria are probably already weakened by antibiotics in the environment.
B) In a livestock barn where the animals have been treated with antibiotics.
C) In a big city where antibiotics are routinely prescribed by doctors.
D) In a remote, sparsely populated area where the bacteria have not been exposed to antibiotic drugs.
E) It doesn’t make any difference?a serious bacterial illness is going to have a similar impact on your health regardless of
where you pick it up.
|
Answer: D Topic: 13.15-Evolution Connection Skill: Application
|
|
44) Which of the following would most quickly be eliminated by natural selection?
A) a harmful allele in an asexual, haploid population
B) a harmful recessive allele in a sexual, diploid population
C) a harmful recessive allele in a sexual, polyploid population
D) any harmful allele, regardless of the system of inheritance in a population
E) neutral variation, because it is not needed
|
Answer: A Topic: 13.16 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
45) The sickle-cell allele produces a serious blood disease in homozygotes. Why doesn’t natural selection eliminate this allele from all human populations?
A) Natural selection is a positive force, so it does not eliminate alleles.
B) In populations where endemic malaria is present, heterozygotes have an important advantage: They are resistant to
malaria and therefore are more likely to survive and produce offspring that carry the allele.
C) Genetic drift tends to keep the allele present in human populations.
D) Mutations keep bringing the allele back into circulation.
E) Natural selection occurs very slowly, but elimination of the sickle-cell allele is expected to occur soon.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.16 Skill: Application
|
|
46) Frequency-dependent selection, as seen in the case of the scale-eating fish in Lake Tanganyika, tends to
A) eliminate rare alleles and favor whichever allele is initially most frequent.
B) maintain two phenotypes in a dynamic equilibrium in a population.
C) produce random changes in allele frequencies.
D) lead to heterozygote advantage.
E) stimulate new mutations.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.16 Skill: Factual Recall
|
|
47) Tay-Sachs is inherited as an autosomal recessive allele. Homozygous individuals die within the first few years of life. However, there is some evidence that heterozygous individuals are more resistant to tuberculosis. Which of the following statements about Tay-Sachs is true?
A) The allele for Tay-Sachs is selected against.
B) This situation is an example of heterozygote advantage if tuberculosis is present in a population.
C) This situation is an example of directional selection.
D) This situation is an example of disruptive selection.
E) Heterozygotes will be more fit than either homozygote regardless of environmental conditions.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.16 Skill: Application
|
|
48) In a particular environment, there are no fitness differences among individuals with dark hair and individuals with light hair. The term that best describes this situation is
A) random mating.
B) random selection.
C) natural selection.
D) differential reproductive success.
E) neutral variation.
|
Answer: E Topic: 13.16 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
49) A lot of your DNA is inherited "junk": It doesn’t code for any protein and has no known function in gene regulation. How do nucleotide sequences of "junk DNA" evolve?
A) They evolve through natural selection.
B) They evolve through genetic drift and other chance processes.
C) They evolve to be more useful by taking on new functions.
D) "Junk DNA" does not evolve. Changes in junk DNA sequences would not serve any purpose for an organism.
E) They evolve by gradually being eliminated from the gene pool.
|
Answer: B Topic: 13.16 Skill: Conceptual Understanding
|
|
50) Mothers and teachers have often said they need another pair of eyes on the backs of their heads. And another pair of hands would come in handy in many situations. You can imagine that these traits would have been advantageous to our early hunter-gatherer ancestors as well. According to sound evolutionary reasoning, what is the most likely explanation for why humans do not have these traits?
A) Because they actually would not be beneficial to the fitness of individuals who possessed them. Natural selection
always produces the most beneficial traits for a particular organism in a particular environment.
B) Because every time they have arisen before, the individual mutants bearing these traits have been killed by chance
events. Chance and natural selection interact.
C) Because these variations have probably never appeared in a healthy human. As tetrapods we are pretty much stuck
with a four-limbed, two-eyed body plan; natural selection can only edit existing variations.
D) Because humans are a relatively young species. If we stick around and adapt for long enough, it is inevitable that the
required adaptations will arise.
E) Because it is physically impossible to have a six-limbed organism with more than one set of eyes. Natural selection
cannot break physical laws.
|
Answer: C Topic: 13.17 Skill: Application
|
