Evolution

Front 1

Pattern vs. Process

Back 1

Pat - what has happened, pro - how it happens

Front 2

Catastrophism

Back 2

Prior to Darwinism, it was the prevailing way of thinking, one big event would cause an extinction of many species, no natural selection and no mutation. Ex. Noah and the flood. Age of earth, 10,000

Front 3

Unifomitism

Back 3

The present is the key to the past, there were slow incremental changes like erosion or slight changes to the atmosphere. Age of earth million of years.

Front 4

Extinction vs. Mass extinction

Back 4

Extinction - end of a species, isolated to one species and normal throughout the history of life.

Mass extinction - many species going extinct to the point where the global biodiversity is greatly reduced.

Front 5

Homology

Back 5

Similar traits which are inherited from a common ancestor, and you can pinpoint where a specific trait evolved in a phylogenetic tree.

Front 6

Analogy

Back 6

A similarity between organism that is not inherited from a common ancestor, the trait cannot be found in a phylogenetic tree. (coevolution)

Front 7

Vestigial structures

Back 7

Inherited structures that have lost most or all of their previous function but are still retained through evolution.

Front 8

Pseudogenes

Back 8

Similar to vestigial structures but they aren't structures, they are mechanisms that are retained through evolution ex, goose bumps. Goose bumps are not structures but their purpose was to keep our ancestors warm when they had a lot of hair and retain air between the hairs.

Front 9

Methodological vs. Ontological Naturalism

Back 9

Methodological - Invokes natural process to describe phenomena

Ontological - takes a metaphysical stance and attributes phenomena to supernatural causes.

Front 10

Law of Succession

Back 10

Extinct species resemble existing species, the old ones are ancestors.

Front 11

homology

Back 11

a similar feature between differing species that comes from a common ancestor.

Front 12

Homoplasy

Back 12

similarity in characteristics found in different species that is from convergent evolution. Shared by a group of species but not shared by a common ancestor.

Front 13

Second Law of Thermodynamics

Back 13

The entropy of the universe is increasing, there will be an increase in disorder.

Front 14

Open system vs. Closed System

Back 14

Closed - the universe, no matter goes in or out.

Open - energy and matter go in and out, we increase order at expense of universal disorder, earth is an open system.

Front 15

Darwinian Takeover (threshold)

Back 15

Trying to create a self-replicating organism with plausible conditions (premordial goo)

Front 16

Dissipation driven Organisation

Back 16

Groups of atoms and molecules will arrange themselves to increase the dissipation of energy over time, order as a result of disorder.

Front 17

Protocell

Back 17

A self-organized spherical collection of lipids, this is considered the stepping-stone to the origin of life.

Front 18

Ribozyme

Back 18

a protein that also contains RNA, it can catalyze its own production.

Front 19

RNA

Back 19

It is D-chiral and it is hard to join bases together in natural conditions.

Front 20

Cambrian explosion

Back 20

540 mil years ago, there was life before this but when O2 increased then there was an explosion of life as animals could become larger but then there was an increase in predation so the first evolutionary arms race happened and adaptations started emerging.

Front 21

Permissive environment

Back 21

not a lot of evolution because there wasn't enough nutrients.

Front 22

boring billion

Back 22

one billion years of few changes, small background evolution.

Front 23

Premian-Triasic

Back 23

250 mill years ago, 90% of marine species went extinct, 70% of terrestrial species gone.

Front 24

Cretaceous-tertiary extinction

Back 24

66 mill years ago, 3/4 of the plant and animal species on earth wiped out. High levels of iridium suggests an asteroid. Non avian dinos gone. Also volcanos were going off.

Front 25

Liposomes

Back 25

composite structures of phospholipid bilayers, may have contained small molecules.

Front 26

Panspermia

Back 26

The hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe, distributed by meteoroids and asteroids.

Front 27

Aerobic respiration

Back 27

The process that most organisms go through to use food energy.

Front 28

Transduction

Back 28

Bacterial DNA is moved through one bacterium to another by use of a virus.

Front 29

Gamblers ruin model

Back 29

There's a gambler and they bet money enough times that they eventually run out of money. This can be said about species as well. They live and adapt, but eventually they cannot adapt fast enough to continue living in a certain environment.

Front 30

Phylogeny

Back 30

The history of organismal lineages as they change and mutate over time. All branches converge at a common ancestor.

Front 31

Cladogram

Back 31

An evolutionary tree that is a result of cladistic analysis, the branch off points represent a hypothetical ancestor, gives you clues to what the ancestor would be like, look like.

Front 32

synapomorphy

Back 32

a trait that is shared by two or more taxa and is inferred to be present in the most recent common ancestor

Front 33

Homoplasy

Back 33

a character shared by a set of species but not present in their common ancestor (convergent evolution)

Front 34

Plesiomorphy

Back 34

refers to the ancestral trait on its own, usually in referene to another more derived trait. Shared with other taxa that have an earlier more recent common ancestor.

Front 35

monophyletic

Back 35

a group of organisms which forms a clade, meaning that it consists of an ancestral species and all of its descendants.

Front 36

synapomorphy

Back 36

ancestor and all descendants united by derived similarity,

Front 37

polyphyletic

Back 37

a group characterized by one or more phenotypes which have converged or reverted so as to appear to be the same but which have not been inherited from common ancestors.

Front 38

paraphyletic

Back 38

do not include all of the decendants of single common ancestors.

Front 39

plesiomorphies

Back 39

an organism that is considered to not be part of the group in question but is closely related to the group (outgroup).

Front 40

ingroup

Back 40

a taxon inside the group of interest.

Front 41

parsimony

Back 41

requiring the fewest changes, or the simplest solution (so in evolution this would be creating a phylogeny that has the simplest solution)

Front 42

Linneaus

Back 42

not an evolutionist he created a classification system in which similar characteristics were grouped together. So cows and horses are mammals.

Front 43

Synonymous vs. nonsynonymous substitutions

Back 43

synon - the substitution of one base for another in the exon of a gene for a protein, but the amino acid is not modified (so probably in the 3rd spot of codon)

non synon - a nucleotide mutation that alters the amino acid, changing the protein.

Front 44

Transitions vs. transversions

Back 44

transit - purine to purine

transverse - purine to pyrimidine

Front 45

Ortholog vs. Paralog

Back 45

Ortho - same gene same locus different species

Para - copy of the same gene at different locus. Can give rise to gene families.

Front 46

gene families

Back 46

a group of genes that share important characteristics, the proteins have similar structure or function.

Front 47

polyploidy

Back 47

cells containing more than two paired sets of chromosomes.

Front 48

purifying selection

Back 48

selective removal of alleles which are deleterious, can result in stabilizing selection.