MD BIOL103 - Which of the following traits may be acted

1. Which of the following traits may be acted on by natural selection?

enzyme activity

body shape

rate of ontogenetic development

instinctual behavior

all of the above may be acted upon as long as they are controlled by genes

2. Which of the following is not capable of evolving?

a population of asexually reproducing fruit flies

a rose bush

a population of fruit flies

the collective feral cats of a city

all the HIV in a single patient

3. Below are examples of changes that occur in life. Which one is an example of biological evolution?

A cell starts to express a different set of genes when it is exposed to high levels of testosterone.

Your taste in music changes dramatically between middle school and high school.

A young man's muscles increase in strength and bulk after he starts lifting weights

In New York City, the average wing length of pigeons decreases over a period of 150 years.

4. Population genetics is the study of ________.
how allele frequencies in a population change over timepopulations of cells in an individualthe rate of population growthhow genes affect embryological development

5. Which of the following variations could be subject to natural selection?

A dog with short legs due to malnutrition is able to crawl into holes better than his litter mates

A tree is not infested by a ground-dwelling beetle when the homeowner cuts the lower branches

A hyena is born with a spotted fur pattern that allows it to hide in the grass bettwe than his litter mates

A pigeon learns than when its keeper comes near it will be fed

All of these variations may be acted on by natural selection

7. _____________ is the primary pressure on species to change over time.
natural section

mutation

adaptation

10. Elephants travel long distances in search of food. Using vibrations felt in the ground, family members traveling separately can communicate with each other. Based on your knowledge of evolution, the ability to communicate over long distances probably developed ___________________________.

slowly over millions of years

by accident

over ten year period

as a strategy to decrease reproduction

as a way to communicate with humans

11. Microevolution is to population as macroevolution is to __________.

individuals

communities

biodiversity

species

12. geographic isolation could result from

a hurricane

an ice age

a fire

all of the above

13. A group of 20 people decide to leave Brazil and settle on a deserted island in the Caribbean. There they form a new population isolated from contact with other human beings. This is an example of ______________.

speciation

gene flow

genetic drift

mutation

14. Complete the following analogy: Microevolution is to population as macroevolution is to ______________.

genes

reproduction

individuals

speciation

15. microevolution is defined as

changes in the frequency of alleles in the gene pool

emergence of new species

changes in population size

changes in the composition of the population

changes in community size

16. A food poisoning outbreak is traced to a new strain of Salmonella bacteria that has a highly potent version of the enterotoxin protein. This toxin is partially responsible for the vomiting and diarrhea associated with Salmonella food poisoning. This is an example of ______________.

mutation

gene flow

genetic drift

macroevolution

17. What are the similarity of fish, frog, bird, and human embryos evidence of?

analogy

common ancestry

genetic drift

genetic mutation

19. Consider Mendel's pea plants in which a single gene determines whether the peas are yellow from the dominant allele Y or green from the recessive allele y (when both alleles are y). According to the Hardy-Weinberg Principle of Equilibrium, what is the frequency of heterozygous individuals in a population under low selective pressure?
p + q =1

p2

2pq