Chapter 23
1) Which of the following is the best modern definition of evolution?
A
2) Microevolutions occur when ________.
B
3) Which statement about the beak size of finches on the island of Daphne Major during prolonged drought is true?
B
4) Which statement about variation is true?
D
5) Which of the following descriptions illustrates phenotype variation caused by environment?
B
6) Genetic variation ________.
C
7) HIV's genome of RNA includes the code for reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme that acts early in infection to synthesize a DNA genome off of an RNA template. The HIV genome also codes for protease (PR), an enzyme that acts later in infection by cutting long viral polyproteins into smaller, functional proteins. Both RT and PR represent potential targets for antiretroviral drugs. Drugs called nucleoside analogs (NA) act against RT, whereas drugs called protease inhibitors (PI) act against PR.
Which of the following treatment options would most likely avoid the evolution of drug-resistant HIV (assuming no drug interactions or side effects)?
D
8) HIV's genome of RNA includes the code for reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme that acts early in infection to synthesize a DNA genome off of an RNA template. The HIV genome also codes for protease (PR), an enzyme that acts later in infection by cutting long viral polyproteins into smaller, functional proteins. Both RT and PR represent potential targets for antiretroviral drugs. Drugs called nucleoside analogs (NA) act against RT, whereas drugs called protease inhibitors (PI) act against PR.
Which mechanism produces variation for evolution by shuffling existing alleles?
B
9) The following experiment is used for the corresponding question.
A researcher discovered a species of moth that lays its eggs on oak trees. Eggs are laid at two distinct times of the year: early in spring when the oak trees are flowering and in midsummer when flowering is past. Caterpillars from eggs that hatch in spring feed on oak flowers and look like oak flowers. But caterpillars that hatch in summer feed on oak leaves and look like oak twigs.
How does the same population of moths produce such different-looking caterpillars on the same trees? To answer this question, the biologist caught many female moths from the same population and collected their eggs. He put at least one egg from each female into eight identical cups. The eggs hatched, and at least two larvae from each female were maintained in one of the four temperature and light conditions listed below.
In each of the four environments, one of the caterpillars was fed oak flowers, the other oak leaves. Thus, there were a total of eight treatment groups (4 environments × 2 diets).
Which of the following is a testable hypothesis that would explain the differences in caterpillar appearance observed in this population?
D
10) Genetic drift produces variation for evolution when ________.
B
11) Homozygotes with two sickle-cell alleles are selected against because of mortality. However, heterozygotes for sickle-cell allele experience little effects of sickle allele and are more likely to survive malaria. The net effect of this exposure produced evolutionary change in areas where malaria is endemic by ________.
B
12) Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder in homozygous recessives that causes death during the teenage years. If 9 in 10,000 newborn babies have the disease, what are the expected frequencies of the dominant (A1) and recessive (A2) alleles according to the Hardy-Weinberg equation?
C
13) Suppose 64% of a remote mountain village can taste phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) and must, therefore, have at least one copy of the dominant PTC taster allele. If this population conforms to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for this gene, what percentage of the population must be heterozygous for this trait?
D
14) If individuals tend to mate within a subset of the population, there is ________.
D
15) Which Hardy-Weinberg condition is affected by population size?
B
16) Use the following information to answer the question below.
Researchers studying a small milkweed population note that some plants produce a toxin and other plants do not. They identify the gene responsible for toxin production. The dominant allele (T) codes for an enzyme that makes the toxin, and the recessive allele (t) codes for a nonfunctional enzyme that cannot produce the toxin. Heterozygotes produce an intermediate amount of toxin. The genotypes of all individuals in the population are determined (see chart) and used to determine the actual allele frequencies in the population.
Is this population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?
C
17) Which one of the following conditions would allow gene frequencies to change by chance?
B
18) The higher the proportion of loci that are "fixed" in a population, the lower are that population's ________.
D
19) Whenever diploid populations are in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium at a particular locus, ________.
A
20) In the formula for determining a population's genotype frequencies, the "2" in the term 2pq is necessary because ________.
B
21) In the formula for determining a population's genotype frequencies, the "pq" in the term 2pq is necessary because ________.
D
22) In a Hardy-Weinberg population with two alleles, A and a, that are in equilibrium, the frequency of the allele a is 0.3. What is the frequency of individuals that are homozygous for this allele?
A
23) In a Hardy-Weinberg population with two alleles, A and a, that are in equilibrium, the frequency of allele a is 0.2. What is the frequency of individuals that are heterozygous for this allele?
D
24) In a Hardy-Weinberg population with two alleles, A and a, that are in equilibrium, the frequency of allele a is 0.1. What is the frequency of individuals with AA genotype?
D
25) You sample a population of butterflies and find that 56% are heterozygous at a particular locus. What should be the frequency of the homozygous individuals in this population?
D
26) In peas, a gene controls flower color such that R = purple and r = white. In an isolated pea patch, there are 36 purple-flowering plants and 64 white-flowering plants. Assuming Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, what is the value of q for this population?
D
27) A large population of laboratory animals has been allowed to breed randomly for a number of generations. After several generations, 25% of the animals display a recessive trait (aa), the same percentage as at the beginning of the breeding program. The rest of the animals show the dominant phenotype, with heterozygotes indistinguishable from the homozygous dominants.
What is the most reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that the frequency of the recessive trait (aa) has not changed over time?
A
28) A large population of laboratory animals has been allowed to breed randomly for a number of generations. After several generations, 25% of the animals display a recessive trait (aa), the same percentage as at the beginning of the breeding program. The rest of the animals show the dominant phenotype, with heterozygotes indistinguishable from the homozygous dominants.
What is the estimated frequency of allele A in the gene pool?
B
29) A large population of laboratory animals has been allowed to breed randomly for a number of generations. After several generations, 25% of the animals display a recessive trait (aa), the same percentage as at the beginning of the breeding program. The rest of the animals show the dominant phenotype, with heterozygotes indistinguishable from the homozygous dominants.
What proportion of the population is probably heterozygous (Aa) for this trait?
C
30) Which one of these processes describes bottleneck effect?
D
31) Comparisons of Neanderthal DNA revealed that there are more similarities to non-African DNA than reference sequences from West Africans. Additionally, scientists found that Neanderthal DNA is as closely related to East Asians as to Europeans. This indicates that interbreeding occurred before human migration further east. What process of population genetics generated these results?
B
32) Soon after the island of Hawaii rose above the sea surface (somewhat less than one million years ago), the evolution of life on this new island should have been most strongly influenced by ________.
D
33) In 1983, a population of dark-eyed junco birds became established on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which is located many miles from the junco's normal habitat in the mixed-coniferous temperate forests in the mountains. Juncos have white outer tail feathers that the males display during aggressive interactions and during courtship displays. Males with more white in their tail are more likely to win aggressive interactions, and females prefer to mate with males with more white in their tails. Females have less white in their tails than do males, and display it less often. (Pamela J. Yeh. 2004. Rapid evolution of a sexually selected trait following population establishment in a novel habitat. Evolution 58[1]:166-74.)
The UCSD campus male junco population tails were, on average, 36% white, whereas the tails of males from nearby mountain populations averaged 40-45% white. If this observed trait difference were due to a difference in the original colonizing population, it would most likely be due to ________.
D
34) In 1983, a population of dark-eyed junco birds became established on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), which is located many miles from the junco's normal habitat in the mixed-coniferous temperate forests in the mountains. Juncos have white outer tail feathers that the males display during aggressive interactions and during courtship displays. Males with more white in their tail are more likely to win aggressive interactions, and females prefer to mate with males with more white in their tails. Females have less white in their tails than do males, and display it less often. (Pamela J. Yeh. 2004. Rapid evolution of a sexually selected trait following population establishment in a novel habitat. Evolution 58[1]:166-74.)
The UCSD campus male junco population tails are about 36% white, whereas the tails of males from nearby mountain populations are about 40-45% white. The founding stock of UCSD birds was likely from the nearby mountain populations because some of those birds overwinter on the UCSD campus each year. Population sizes on the UCSD campus have been reasonably large, and there are significant habitat differences between the UCSD campus and the mountain coniferous forests; UCSD campus has a more open environment (making birds more visible) and a lower junco density (decreasing intraspecific competition) than the mountain forests. Given this information, which of the following evolutionary mechanisms do you think is most likely responsible for the difference between the UCSD and mountain populations?
A
35) The Dunkers are a religious group that moved from Germany to Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s. They do not marry with members outside their own immediate community. Today, the Dunkers are genetically unique and differ in gene frequencies, at many loci, from all other populations including those in their original homeland. Which of the following mechanisms likely explains the genetic uniqueness of this population?
D
36) An earthquake decimates a ground-squirrel population, killing 98% of the squirrels. The surviving population happens to have broader stripes, on average, than the initial population. If broadness of stripes is genetically determined, what effect has the ground-squirrel population experienced during the earthquake?
D
37) Which of the following is the most predictable outcome of increased gene flow between two populations?
D
38) In 1986, a nuclear power accident in Chernobyl, USSR (now Ukraine), led to high radiation levels for miles surrounding the plant. The high levels of radiation caused elevated mutation rates in the surviving organisms, and evolutionary biologists have been studying rodent populations in the Chernobyl area ever since. Based on your understanding of evolutionary mechanisms, which of the following most likely occurred in the rodent populations following the accident?
B
39) Over time, the movement of people on Earth has steadily increased. This has altered the course of human evolution by increasing ________.
D
40) You are maintaining a small population of fruit flies in the laboratory by transferring the flies to a new culture bottle after each generation. After several generations, you notice that the viability of the flies has decreased greatly. Recognizing that small population size is likely to be linked to decreased viability, the best way to reverse this trend is to ________.
A
41) The inability of organisms to evolve anything that could be an advantage reflects ________.
A
42) Why does the fitness of a phenotype depend on frequency-dependent selection?
D
43) On the Bahamian island of Andros, mosquitofish populations live in various, now-isolated, freshwater ponds that were once united. Currently, some predator-rich ponds have mosquitofish that can swim in short, fast bursts; other predator-poor ponds have mosquitofish that can swim continuously for a long time. When placed together in the same body of water, the two kinds of female mosquitofish exhibit exclusive breeding preferences.
If one builds a canal linking a predator-rich pond to a predator-poor pond, then what type of selection should subsequently be most expected among the mosquitofish in the original predator-rich pond, and what type should be most expected among the mosquitofish in the formerly predator-poor pond?
C
44) Use the following information to answer the question below.
Martin Wikelski and L. Michael Romero (Body size, performance and fitness in Galápagos marine iguanas, Integrative and Comparative Biology 43 [2003]:376-86) measured the snout-to-vent (anus) length of Galápagos marine iguanas and observed the percent survival of different-sized animals, all of the same age. The graph shows the log snout-vent length (SVL, a measure of overall body size) plotted against the percent survival of these different size classes for males and females.
Examine the figure. What type of selection for body size appears to be occurring in these marine iguanas?
B
45) Use the following information to answer the question below.
Martin Wikelski and L. Michael Romero (Body size, performance and fitness in Galápagos marine iguanas, Integrative and Comparative Biology 43 [2003]:376-86) measured the snout-to-vent (anus) length of Galápagos marine iguanas and observed the percent survival of different-sized animals, all of the same age. The graph shows the log snout-vent length (SVL, a measure of overall body size) plotted against the percent survival of these different size classes for males and females.
Currently the only predators of Galápagos marine iguanas are Galápagos hawks. Iguana body size is not correlated with risk of hawk predation, although small iguanas can sprint faster than large iguanas. If predators (for example, cats) that preferably catch and eat slower iguanas are introduced to the island, iguana body size is likely to ________ in the absence of other factors; the iguanas would then be under ________ selection.
C
46) Three-spined stickleback fish (Gasterosteus aculeatus) show substantial heritable variation in gill-raker length related to differences in their diets. Longer gill rakers appear to function better for capturing open-water prey, while shorter gill rakers function better for capturing shallow-water prey. Which of the following types of selection is most likely to be found in a large lake (open water in the middle and shallow water around the sides) with a high density of these fish?
C
47) A biologist doing a long-term study on a wild spider population observes increased variation in silk thickness. Which of the following could the spider population be experiencing?
C
48) In some jacana species, males take care of the eggs and young, and females compete among themselves for territories that contain one to several males. Female jacanas are significantly larger than males. Which of these statements would you predict to be true of this bird species?
C
49) The restriction enzymes of bacteria protect the bacteria from successful attack by bacteriophages, whose genomes can be degraded by the restriction enzymes. The bacterial genomes are not vulnerable to these restriction enzymes because bacterial DNA is methylated. This situation selects for bacteriophages whose genomes are also methylated. As new strains of resistant bacteriophages become more prevalent, this in turn selects for bacteria whose genomes are not methylated and whose restriction enzymes instead degrade methylated DNA. The outcome of the conflict between bacteria and bacteriophages at any point in time results from ________.
A
50) The restriction enzymes of bacteria protect the bacteria from successful attack by bacteriophages, whose genomes can be degraded by the restriction enzymes. The bacterial genomes are not vulnerable to these restriction enzymes because bacterial DNA is methylated. This situation selects for bacteriophages whose genomes are also methylated. As new strains of resistant bacteriophages become more prevalent, this in turn selects for bacteria whose genomes are not methylated and whose restriction enzymes instead degrade methylated DNA. Over the course of evolutionary time, what should occur?
D
51) Arrange the following in order from most general to most specific.
A) 4, 1, 2, 3, 5
B) 4, 2, 1, 3, 5
C) 4, 2, 1, 5, 3
D) 1, 4, 2, 5, 3
C
52) Adult male humans generally have deeper voices than do adult female humans, which is the direct result of higher levels of testosterone causing growth of the larynx. If the fossil records of apes and humans alike show a trend toward decreasing larynx size in adult females and increasing larynx size in adult males, then ________.
A
53) Most Swiss starlings produce four to five eggs in each clutch. Starlings producing fewer or more than this have reduced fitness. Which of the following terms best describes this situation?
B
54) When imbalances occur in the sex ratio of sexual species that have two sexes (that is, other than a 50:50 ratio), the members of the minority sex often receive a greater proportion of care and resources from parents than do the offspring of the majority sex. This is most clearly an example of ________.
D
55) A proficient engineer can easily design skeletal structures that are more functional than those currently found in the forelimbs of such diverse mammals as horses, whales, and bats. The actual forelimbs of these mammals do not seem to be optimally arranged because ________.
D
56) Anopheles mosquitoes, which carry the malaria parasite, cannot live above elevations of 5,900 feet. In addition, oxygen availability decreases with higher altitude. Consider a hypothetical human population that is adapted to life on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, a country in equatorial Africa. Mt. Kilimanjaro's base is about 2,600 feet above sea level and its peak is 19,341 feet above sea level. If the incidence of the sickle-cell allele in the population is plotted against altitude (feet above sea level), which of the following distributions is most likely, assuming little migration of people up or down the mountain?
A)
B)
C)
D)
B
57) In a very large population, a quantitative trait has the following distribution pattern. If there is no gene flow, the curve shifts to the left or to the right, and the population size consequently increases over successive generations, which of the following is most likely occurring?
B
58) Use the following information to answer the question below.
In those parts of equatorial Africa where the malaria parasite is most common, the sickle-cell allele constitutes 20% of the β hemoglobin alleles in the human gene pool.
In the United States, the parasite that causes malaria is not present, but it is present in African-Americans whose ancestors were from equatorial Africa. What should be happening to the sickle-cell allele in the United States, and what should be happening to it in equatorial Africa?
D
59) Swine are vulnerable to infection by bird flu virus and human flu virus, which can both be present in an individual pig at the same time. When this occurs, it is possible for genes from bird flu virus and human flu virus to be combined. If the human flu virus contributes a gene for Tamiflu resistance (Tamiflu is an antiviral drug) to the new virus, and if the new virus is introduced to an environment lacking Tamiflu, then what is most likely to occur?
C