BIOLOGY REVIEWER

3/28/2023

EVOLUTION

• Allele is one of the two or more versions of a gene.

• An organism inherits 2 alleles, one from father and another from mother.

• Allele frequency is a measure of how common an allele is in a population.

WHAT CAUSES EVOLUTION?

MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION

ARTIFICIAL SELECTION

• People breed selected dogs to come up with desired traits.

• Man decides on what will be the traits of the dogs’ succeeding generations.

• Humans decide on the traits of upcoming generations.

• Pick the desired traits.

• Breed them.

• Artificial selection is change in a population with human control.

NATURAL SELECTION

• Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently studied about natural selection.

• According to Charles Darwin who studied finches in Galápagos Islands, differences in the beaks
were related to the tasks performed by the finches in the environment they are in.

• Short-beaked finches that crack seeds became common in areas where there was large supply
of seeds on the ground.

• Long-beaked finches that extract pollen and nectar from cactus flowers became common in
places populated with many cactus.

• Nature dictates how the organisms change.

• When the environment change, the organisms need to adapt to these changes for them to
survive.

• Natural selection is evolution because of change in nature.

MUTATION

• A change in the DNA sequence of an organism

• Example: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, an inherited condition that alters the structure of collagen
in the body, giving great elasticity in the connective tissues in the skin, joints, and muscles.

• When the information contained in an organism’s gene is altered, traits passed on to next
generations may also change.
 BIOLOGY REVIEWER
3/28/2023

RECOMBINATION

• This takes place in crossing over during meiotic cell division.

• The two homologous chromosomes undergo vertical splitting forming sister chromatids. The
non-sister chromatids cross-over and exchange their genetic material.

• This is also responsible for gene variability.

Mutation and recombination are both drivers of evolution because of change in genetic material.

GENETIC DRIFT

• In each generation, some individuals may, just by chance, leave behind a few more descendants
and genes than other individuals.

• The genes and other genetic elements of the next generation will be those of the “lucky”
individuals, not necessarily the healthier or “better” individuals.

Genetic drift is the evolution by ‘chance’.

Migration/ gene flow

• For example, many plant seeds are spread far and wide by wind or through the guts of animals.
These seeds may introduce alleles common in the source population to a new population in
which they are rare.

• Gene flow can occur when an individual travels from one geographic location to another and
joins a different population of the species. In the example shown here, the recessive alleles are
introduced into a population with pure dominant alleles.

Migration is change in population due to entrance and exit of gene.

PROCESSES AND PATTERNS IN EVOLUTION

IMPORTANT TERMS:

• Microevolution- changes within a species

• Macroevolution- patterns on the larger scale; changes from one species to another, or between
different lineages of ancestors and descendants

EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION

• Natural selection can only take place if there is variation, or differences, among individuals in a
population.

• Importantly, these differences must have some genetic basis; otherwise, the selection will not
lead to change in the next generation.

Genetic diversity in a population comes from two main mechanisms:

• Mutation

• Sexual reproduction
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3/28/2023

GENETIC DIVERSITY due to Mutation

• Mutation, a change in DNA, is the ultimate source of new alleles, or new genetic variation in any
population.

• The genetic changes that mutation causes can have one of three outcomes on the phenotype.

• A mutation affects the organism's phenotype in a way that gives it reduced fitness—lower
likelihood of survival or fewer offspring.

• A mutation may produce a phenotype with a beneficial effect on fitness.

• NEUTRAL MUTATIONS: Many mutations will also have no effect on the phenotype's fitness.

• Mutations may also have a whole range of effect on the organism's fitness that expresses them
in their phenotype, from a small effect to a great effect.

GENETIC DIVERSITY due to Sexual reproduction

• When two parents reproduce, unique combinations of alleles assemble to produce the unique
genotypes and thus phenotypes in each offspring.

ADAPTATION

• A heritable trait helps an organism's survival and reproduction in its present environment.

• A platypus's webbed feet are an adaptation for swimming.

• A snow leopard's thick fur is an adaptation for living in the cold.

• A cheetah's fast speed is an adaptation for catching prey.

• Whether or not a trait is favorable depends on the current environmental conditions. The same
traits are not always selected because environmental conditions can change. For example,
consider a plant species that grew in a moist climate and did not need to conserve water. Large
leaves were selected because they allowed the plant to obtain more energy from the sun. Large
leaves require more water to maintain than small leaves, and the moist environment provided
favorable conditions to support large leaves.

• After thousands of years, the climate changed, and the area no longer had excess water. The
direction of natural selection shifted so that plants with small leaves were selected because
those populations were able to conserve water to survive the new environmental conditions.

DIVERGENT EVOLUTION

• The evolution of species has resulted in enormous variation in form and function. Sometimes,
evolution gives rise to groups of organisms that become tremendously different from each
other. Species evolve in diverse directions from a common point.

• Example: The forms of the reproductive organs of flowering plants which share the same basic
anatomies; however, they can look very different as a result of selection in different physical
environments and adaptation to different kinds of pollinators.

CONVERGENT EVOLUTION

• Similar phenotypes evolve independently in distantly related species, or similar traits evolve
independently in species that do not share a common ancestry.

• For example, flight has evolved in both bats and insects, and they both have structures we refer
to as wings, which are adaptations to flight. However, bat and insect wings have evolved from
very different original structures.

• The two species came to the same function, flying, but did so separately from each other.
 BIOLOGY REVIEWER
3/28/2023

MILLION EVENTS
EPOCH/AGE YEARS
ERA PERIOD
AGO
Holocene TODAY Ice age ends
QUATERNARY 0.01 Humans are dominant
Cenozoic Pleistocene 1.6 Earliest Human Appear
Age of Mammals
Ice Age Begins
65.5 mya – present Pliocene 5.3 Homonids (human ancestors) appear
day
Miocene 23.7 Grass become widespread
TERTIARY
Oligocene 36.6 Mammals are dominant

Eocene 57.8 Eocene – Oligocene extinction event

Paleocene 65.5 First large mammals appear

Cretaceous Extinction of 144 K-T Extinction event

Mesozoic Dinosaurs Earth looks closer to present day
Age of Reptiles Flowering plants appear
Jurassic 208 First birds appear
245 – 65.5 mya Pangaea splits into Lauraia,
Gondwanna
Dinosaurs are dominant
Triassic First 245 Pangaea cracks
Dinosaurs First mammals appear
Reptiles are dominant
Permian Age of 286 Permian – Triassic extinction event
Amphibians Pangaea forms
Paleozoic
Carboniferous 360 First reptiles appear
First large cartilaginous fishes
570 – 245 mya
appear
Devonian Age of Fishes 408 Late Devonian extinction event
First land animals appear
First amphibians appear
Silurian 438 First land plants appear
First jawed fishes appear
First insects appear
Ordovician 505 Ordovician – Silurian extinction
Age of event
Invertebrates First vertebrates appear
Cambrian 570 End Botonian Extinction event
First fungi appear
Trilobites are dominant
Proterozoic 2500 First soft-bodied animals appear
Eon First multicellular life appears
Precambrian
4600 – 570 mya Achean 3800 Photosynthesizing cyanobacteria
Eon appear
First unicellular life appears
Hadean Priscoan 4600 Atmosphere and oceans form
Eon Period Oldest rocks form as earth cools