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Stearns & Hoekstra: Evolution 2e

Chapter 02

Instructions

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Question 01

Define conditions as follows:

(a) There is variation among individuals in lifetime reproductive success.
(b) There is heritable variation in a trait.
(c) There is a significant correlation between variation among individuals in the trait and variation among individuals in lifetime reproductive success.

Which of the following statements is true?

a) If (a) and (b) are true, but (c) is not, natural selection is operating.

b) If (a) is true but (b) is not, (c) cannot be true.

c) If (a) and (b) are true, but (c) is not, drift is operating.

Question 02

Which of the followings statements about intraspecific competition is true?

a) Intraspecific competition reduces variation among individuals in lifetime reproductive success.

b) Intraspecific competition increases variation among individuals in lifetime reproductive success.

c) Intraspecific competition has no impact on differences among individuals in lifetime reproductive success.

d) Intraspecific competition is not what Reverend Malthus was thinking of at all.

Question 03

Evolution is based solely on a random process. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 04

A random process cannot produce an extremely complicated state in a finite amount of time. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 05

Variation in reproductive success yields information on what works well, in the sense that it survives and reproduces. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 06

Inheritance of things associated with reproductive success preserves a "memory" in the population of what works well in the above sense. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 07

Natural selection working on random variation could not possibly yield organisms that appeared to be well designed. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 08

Evolution through natural selection cannot be observed because it happens too slowly for humans to notice. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 09

Group selection is impossible. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 10

Group selection is less likely than individual selection. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 11

Group selection has probably happened occasionally and may help to explain the existence of some important biological phenomena. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 12

Natural selection inevitably produces efficient adaptations. True or false?

a) True

b) False

Question 13

It has been experimentally demonstrated that some populations are very poorly adapted to a particular natural environment. Which of the following observations does this not support?

a) This disproves the entire theory of evolution.

b) This can be explained by gene flow from places where the organisms are well adapted to places where they are poorly adapted.

c) This suggests that one must be careful to study what is going on in the entire geographical range of a species before drawing conclusions about important matters like the existence of adaptation or the lack thereof.

Question 14

The reason that natural selection on humans could not produce humans with a pair of wings originating between their shoulder blades is that:

a) there is no genetic variation for such wings in human populations.

b) the tetrapod lineage to which we belong does not contain developmental mechanisms that allow for the production of an entirely new pair of appendages in addition to the two pairs that already exist.

c) both of the above.

Question 15

Which of the following statements is true?

a) Complicated organs like eyes could never have been produced by natural selection.

b) If we were designing the vertebrate eye from scratch, we would design it just the way evolution did.

c) All aspects of the body are so beautifully designed that only an intelligence could have produced them.

d) Many features of organisms suggest that they have been constrained by their history to operate with suboptimal solutions that no engineer would design.

 

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