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CLEP Biology: Principles Of Evolution

Subjects : clep, science, biology
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. The study of ____________ ____________ supports the claim of a common origin of organisms.






2. Linnaeus placed all monkeys and apes along with humans into the order _________






3. About 1.8 million years ago - early Homo gave rise to _______ ________ - the species thought to have been ancestral to our own.






4. In general if two genes have an almost identical DNA sequence - it is likely that they are ____________.






5. The Linnaean system uses two Latin name categories - ________ and species - to designate each type of organism.






6. Except for the tail fins - whales greatly resemble fish in outline - but are instead descended from four-legged land ___________.






7. Humans are ____________ - meaning we walk on two of our limbs. The amount of melanin in our skin is representative of the environment we live in - i.e. dark skinned people occupy hotter climates.






8. Some important structural changes during the evolution of horse are: Increase in size from 11' (Eohippus) to about 60' (Equus) - and ___________ of the head and neck so as that it can reach the ground.






9. The early stages of development of the ___________ of fish - salamander - tortoise - hen and man show remarkable similarity.






10. As the finch population began to flourish in these advantageous conditions - ______________ competition became a factor - and resources on the islands were squeezed and could not sustain the population of the finches for long.






11. Homo erectus was the first hominid to use ___________ - and have social structures for food gathering.






12. _____________ is the end of a particular evolutionary line - the end of a species - a family - or a larger group of organisms.






13. _______________ is that branch of biology dealing with the identification and naming of organisms.






14. _____________ struggle takes place between the individuals of the same species.






15. _____________ is the accumulation of small changes in a gene pool over a relatively short period.






16. In species which reproduce _____________ - extinction of a species is generally inevitable when there is only one individual of that species left - or only individuals of a single sex.






17. Most anthropologists agree that the ______ _______ was populated by a series of three migrations over the temporary land connection between Asia and North America.






18. Homology has to be distinguished from ___________; for instance - the wings of insects and the wings of birds are analogous but not homologous.






19. _________ evidence shows that the horse has undergone considerable evolutionary change over a period of 60 million years.






20. As populations diverge - they form similar but related species. When are two populations new species? When populations no longer _____________ they are thought to be separate species.






21. When Charles Darwin was in the Galapagos islands - one of the first things he noticed is the variety of ___________ that existed on each of the islands.






22. Jean Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) developed one of the first theories on how species changed. Lamarck - in 1809 - concluded that organisms of higher complexity had __________ from preexisting - less complex organisms.






23. ___________ evolution is an evolutionary process in which organisms not closely related independently acquire some characteristic or characteristics in common.






24. At some time in their life cycle - chordates have a pair of lateral gill slits or pouches used to obtain __________ in a liquid environment.






25. There are at least ___________ of animals. Humans are members of the phylum Chordata.






26. In the 1680s Ariaantje and Gerrit Jansz emigrated from Holland to South Africa - one of them bringing along an allele for the mild metabolic disease porphyria. Today more than 30000 South Africans carry this allele and - in every case examined - can






27. If a population began with a few individuals - one or more of whom carried a particular allele - that allele may come to be represented in many of the descendants. This is known as ____________.






28. ___________ is a specific explanation of similarity of form seen in the biological world. In genetics - it is used in reference to protein or DNA sequences - meaning that the given sequences share ancestry.






29. Prior to the scientific discoveries of the past 200 years - _____________ from the Book Of Genesis described how living things came into being.






30. __________ are the remains of organisms that lived in the past.






31. At the molecular level - life's ability to reproduce begins with the replication of ____________ - during which two new spirals are created that are exact replicas of the original molecule.






32. Darwin's Finches illustrated ___________ ____________. This is where species all deriving from a common ancestor have over time successfully adapted to their environment via natural selection.






33. The Neolithic transition - about 10 -000 years ago - involved the change from __________-__________ societies to agricultural ones based on cultivation of plants and domesticated animals.






34. The most recent mass extinction - the K-T extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period - is best known for having wiped out the __________ .






35. There are certain animals with intermediate characters between two major groups of animals. They are called ___________ _____.






36. ____________ organs are formed on the same basic plan though they may be modified variously to perform different functions. They must have a common ancestral structure which gave rise to different modifications.






37. Mammals developed from primitive mammal-like reptiles during the __________ Period - some 200-245 million years ago.






38. An important step toward the modern theory of evolution came in the 1760's - when Count George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707-1788) published his Natural History of Animals with the idea that species __________ over time.






39. The ______-____-______ Hypothesis proposes that some Homo erectus remained in Africa and continued to evolve into Homo sapiens - and left Africa about 100 -000-200 -000 years ago. From a single source - Homo sapiens replaced all populations of Homo e






40. For humans - the complete classification is: Kingdom (Animalia); Phylum (__________); Class (Mammalia); Order (Primates); Family (Hominidae); Genus (Homo); Species (Sapiens).






41. The ____________ mammals occupy Australia - and differ from placental mammals because they bear their young inside a pouch (instead of a placenta).






42. All organisms are placed into one of five kingdoms: Monera - Protista - ________ - Plantae - Animalia.






43. Differential reproduction allows one species to gradually evolve into a new species. This is the process of ____________.






44. A ___________ can be defined as one or more populations of interbreeding organisms that are reproductively isolated in nature from all other organisms.






45. Darwin reported that all organisms tend to _____________ in a geometric ratio provided there are no environmental checks. Even slow breeding animals like the elephant may theoretically give rise to 19 million descendants in a period of 750 years.






46. An allele may increase - or decrease - in frequency simply through ___________. Not every member of the population will become a parent and not every set of parents will produce the same number of offspring.






47. The mutation may be harmful (resulting in a reduced probability of survival for the organism involved) - ____________ (it might also do its intended job better) or merely neutral (no effect at all).






48. Any change of _________ frequencies in a gene pool indicates that evolution has occurred. The Hardy-Weinberg law proposes that those factors that violate the conditions listed - cause evolution.






49. Despite their image as brutish simpletons - _____________were the first humans to bury their dead with artifacts - indicating abstract thought - perhaps a belief in an after-life.






50. ______________ struggle is the struggle of organisms against the physical environment.