Post Lab Evolution Quiz

In lab this week we revisited the topic of evolution. . Below you will find a refresher of the information we covered in class on evolution and natural selection. . In lab we conducted the exercise from the lab textbook (  Evolution and Natural Selection), You will need the data from that lab to answer some of these questions. 

Natural Selection- Refresher

In lab we focused on natural selection. This is defined as 'as a difference in the survival and reproduction of individuals in a population' . I can think of this as ''Nature'' or the environment selecting which individuals do better than others and therefore survive and reproduce. For natural selection to occur there needs to be

• Variation in the population 
• That variation needs to be heritable  (i.e = Genetic variation in the population)
• A difference in survival and reproduction between these variants

Sources of Genetic Variation - Refresher

There are two main sources of genetic variation that we have examined:

• sexual reproduction
  • random fertilization
  • meiosis- crossing over and independent assortment of homologous chromosomes 
• mutations.

Sexual reproduction reshuffles genetic traits and is very important when talking about the evolution of eukaryotes. But viruses and bacteria are much more influenced by mutations. Remember what we learned about mutations:

• a mutation can have no impact on the function of a protein
• a mutation can have a small impact on the function of a protein
• a mutation can have a large impact on the function of a protein

This depends on which nucleotide is affected and therefore which amino acid is affected. It is essentially random .

Evolution Quiz 

There will be questions that are based on what we learned in lecture about evolution and natural selection.

There will also be question on the activity we did that  simulated natural selection on a population of Jelly-Belly organisms that were living/hiding in a habitat of Seed-Soil. 

You will need to use the data from lab- add link after lab  to answer the questions in the quiz