Bio Chapters 13-15

Front 1

Aristotle

Back 1

founded the scala naturae, at a time when species were thought to be created individually by God.

Front 2

Scala Naturae

Back 2

"evolutionary ladder" each species had an "ideal" structure and place

Front 3

Buffon

Back 3

french naturalist, often professed to believe in special creation and the fixity of species.

Front 4

Lamarack

Back 4

first biologist to believe that evolution does occur and to link diversity with adaptation to the environment.

Front 5

Lyell

Back 5

wrote principles of geology, which supported James Hutton's theaory of geological change. Went and proposed a theory of uniformitarianism concluding that extreme geological change can be accounted for by slow natural processes, given enough time, and they occur at a uniform rate.

Front 6

Darwin

Back 6

gathered evidence that organisms are related through common descent and that adaptation to carious enviornments results in diversity

Front 7

Wallace

Back 7

English naturalist who independantly proposed natural selection as a process to explain the origin of species.

Front 8

Malthus

Back 8

stressed the reproductice potetial of human beings. He proposed that death and famine were inevitable because the human population tends to increase faster than the supply of fod.

Front 9

Catastrophism

Back 9

Belief espoused by Georges Cuvier that periods of catastrophic extinctions occurres, after which repopulation of surviving species took place, giving the appearance of change through time.

Front 10

Uniformitarianism

Back 10

Belief espoused by James Hutton that geological forces act at a continuous uniform rate

Front 11

Acquired Characteristics

Back 11

links diversity with adaptation to the environment. (the environment can bring about inherited change)

Front 12

Biogeography

Back 12

study of the geographic distrubution of life-forms on Earth.

Front 13

Natural selection

Back 13

Mechanism of evolution caused by enviornmental selection of organisms most fit to reproduce; results in adaptation to the enviornment. (see book also)

Front 14

Kin selection

Back 14

Kin selection was first suggested by Darwin as an explanation of the sterile castes of social insects and has later been mathematically defined by W. D. Hamilton as a mechanism for the evolution of apparently altruistic acts. Kin altruism is the technical term for altruistic behaviour that has been shown, or is theoretically supposed, to be explained by kin selection.

Front 15

Fossil

Back 15

Any past evidence of an organism that has been preserved in the Earth's crust.