**This list may change, check it for updates regularly**

• What evolutionary theories existed before Darwin?
• On what ship did Darwin sail around the world?
• What book set Darwin's thinking towards uniformitarianism?
• What did Darwin note on the Cape Verde Island of Santiago?
• What did Darwin note about the forests in Salvador, Brazil?
• What kind of fossils did Darwin find in Chile / Pategonia?
• What was interesting about the finches Darwin collected on the Galapagos Islands?
• How do volcanic islands evolve into coral atolls?
• What book set Darwin to thinking about competition in nature?
• What are the 5 parts to Darwin's theory of organic evolution?
• Which are generally accepted and which are controversial?

• Compare/contrast gradualism with punctuated equilibrium.
• What 5 observations and 3 inferences make up the theory of natural selection?
• What was the significance of Gregor Mendel's work with pea plants?
• What is a gene?  What is an allele?  What is a recessive vs. a dominant allele?
• What did Mendel determine mathematically?
• What is Neodarwinism (the "modern synthetic theory of evolution)?
• Differentiate between macroevolution and microevolution.

• What are the 3 general types of natural selection?
• Although selection acts on the individual organism, what does it change in a population?
• What type of selection is occurring if you breed only big dogs?
• What type of selection was responsible for average human birthweights?
• Give an example of disruptive selection.
• What is adaptive radiation?.
• What is generally accepted as the most common form of speciation?
• What other phenomenon can cause microevolution of a species?

• What are homologous structures?
• Why are vestigial structures called "ancestral baggage"?
• Are a horse's front leg and a dolphin's front flipper homologous?
• Are a bat's wing and a bird's wing homologous (this is tricky - answer carefully)?
• Are a bat's wing and an insect's wing homologous?
• What are analogous traits?  What is convergence, or convergent evolution?

• What is the difference between allopatric and sympatric speciation?
• What are the 3 general causes of allopatric speciation?
• List 4 different species concepts....generally describe each.
• What is the most widely used species concept, and who developed it?
• How do new alleles appear in a gene pool? (answer:  mutation of course!).
• What is a subspecies?  What is an ecological race?  Give some examples.
• What is required for speciation to occur?
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• What are prezygotic-premating isolating mechanisms?
• What are prezygotic-postmating isolating mechanisms?
• What are postzygotic reproductive isolating mechanisms?
• Be able to provide examples for each of the above (I listed some in class).
• What are the problems with the biological species concept?
• What 3 modes of reproduction do not fit into the biological species concept?
• How does polypoidy produce a "new species" in one generation?
• About how many generations differentiate microevolution and macroevolution?
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