VCE Biology Unit 4 evolution case studies quiz

Variation, heritability, and differential reproductive success

Mutation, environment, and speciation

Genes, gametes, and gradualism

Niche, competition, and predation

Genetic drift in small populations

Industrial melanism as natural selection driven by predation pressure changing with environmental soot

Lamarckian inheritance

Polyploid speciation

Convergent evolution

Selection pressure favouring pre-existing resistant variants, with horizontal gene transfer spreading resistance

Allopatric speciation

Lamarck's giraffe model

Adaptive radiation from a common ancestor following geographic isolation and ecological opportunity

Gene flow homogenising allele frequencies

Convergent evolution from unrelated lineages

Mass extinction

Always produces beneficial change

Is a random change in allele frequency due to sampling, particularly significant in small populations

Cannot occur in animals

Requires high mutation rates

Two populations look different

Two populations can no longer interbreed to produce fertile offspring under natural conditions

Two populations live in different habitats

One population is hunted to extinction

A single complete fossil

Hominin fossils (Lucy, Turkana Boy, Neanderthal), comparative anatomy, mtDNA and Y-chromosome lineages, and molecular clocks

Only DNA evidence

Only fossils

Pure multiregional, with no African origin

Modern humans evolved in Africa and dispersed, with limited interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans in Eurasia

Independent origin on every continent

Aliens

Marsupial mammals and placental mammals evolving similar body plans for similar niches independently

All mammals descending from one ancestor

Dogs and wolves being closely related

Genetic drift

Natural selection is a force of evolution.

I will write about natural selection examples.

Antibiotic resistance demonstrates natural selection on a human timescale, with selection pressure from clinical antibiotic use favouring pre-existing resistant variants whose frequencies have risen across global pathogen populations within decades.

Charles Darwin discovered evolution.