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Evolutionary Biology
Some terms deemed important by my Evolutionary Biology professor
50
Biology
Undergraduate 2
10/15/2013

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Term
Clade
Definition
a group consisting of an ancestor and all its descendants
Term
Lineage
Definition
a sequence of species, that form a line of descent, each new species the direct result of speciation from an immediate ancestral species
Term
Systematics
Definition
the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time
Term
Taxonomy
Definition
the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those group
Term
Phenetic
Definition
an attempt to classify organisms based on overall similarity, usually in morphology or other observable traits, regardless of their phylogeny or evolutionary relation
Term
Cladistic
Definition
an approach to biological classification in which items are grouped together based on whether or not they have one or more shared unique characteristics that come from the group's last common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors
Term
Monophyletic
Definition
a taxon (group of organisms) which forms a clade, meaning that it consists of an ancestral species and all its descendants
Term
Paraphyletic
Definition
consists of an ancestral species, and some, but not all, of it's descendants
Term
Polyphyletic
Definition
a group characterized by one or more homoplasies
Term
Derived Traits
Definition
a trait that is present in an organism, but was absent in the last common ancestor of the group being considered
Term
Synapomorphy
Definition
a trait that is shared ("symmorphy") by two or more taxa and inferred to have been present in their most recent common ancestor
Term
Pleisiomorphy
Definition
(ancestral state) is a character state that a taxon has retained from its ancestors
Term
Apomorphy
Definition
is a derived state
Term
Homology vs Analogy
Definition
a relationship between a pair of structures, or genes, due to having shared ancestry vs a trait or structure that serves a similar function in two unrelated organisms
Term
Homoplasy
Definition
a trait (genetic, morphological etc.) that is shared by two or more taxa because of convergence, parallelism or reversal
Term
Convergent Evolution
Definition
the independent evolution of similar features in species of different lineages
Term
Biogeography
Definition
the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time
Term
Phylogeography
Definition
the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the contemporary geographic distributions of individuals
Term
Genotype
Definition
the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific characteristic under consideration
Term
Phenotype
Definition
the composite of an organism's observable characteristics or traits, such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, phenology, behavior, and products of behavior
Term
Phenotypic Plasticity
Definition
the ability of an organism to change its phenotype in response to changes in the environment
Term
Mutation
Definition
a change of the nucleotide sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal genetic element
Term
Point Mutation
Definition
a type of mutation that causes the replacement of a single base nucleotide with another nucleotide of the genetic material, DNA or RNA
Term
Transition
Definition
a point mutation that changes a purine nucleotide to another purine (A ↔ G) or a pyrimidine nucleotide to another pyrimidine (T ↔ C)
Term
Transversion
Definition
the substitution of a purine for a pyrimidine or vice versa
Term
Synonymous
Definition
the evolutionary substitution of one base for another in an exon of a gene coding for a protein, such that the produced amino acid sequence is not modified
Term
Nonsynonymous
Definition
a nucleotide mutation that alters the amino acid sequence of a protein
Term
Introns
Definition
any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is removed by RNA splicing while the final mature RNA product of a gene is being generated
Term
Exons
Definition
any nucleotide sequence encoded by a gene that remains present within the final mature RNA product of that gene after introns have been removed by RNA splicing
Term
Allele Frequency
Definition
the proportion of a particular allele (variant of a gene) among all allele copies being considered
Term
Paralogous Genes
Definition
were created by a duplication event within the genome
Term
Orthologous Genes
Definition
descended from the same ancestral sequence separated by a speciation event
Term
Linkage
Definition
the tendency of genes that are located proximal to each other on a chromosome to be inherited together during meiosis
Term
Polyploidy
Definition
containing more than two paired (homologous) sets of chromosomes
Term
Fitness
Definition
the ability to both survive and reproduce
Term
Genotype Frequencies
Definition
the number of individuals with a given genotype divided by the total number of individuals in population
Term
Overdominance
Definition
a condition in genetics where the phenotype of the heterozygote lies outside the phenotypical range of both homozygote parents
Term
Underdominance
Definition
the selection against the mean of a population distribution
Term
Frequency-Dependent Selection
Definition
an evolutionary process where the fitness of a phenotype is dependent on its frequency relative to other phenotypes in a given population
Term
Adaptive Evolution
Definition
a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection
Term
Population Genetics
Definition
the study of allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four main evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow
Term
Founder Effect
Definition
the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population
Term
Effective Population Size
Definition
the number of breeding individuals in an idealised population that would show the same amount of dispersion of allele frequencies under random genetic drift or the same amount of inbreeding as the population under consideration
Term
Substitution
Definition
a type of mutation that causes the replacement of a single base nucleotide with another nucleotide of the genetic material
Term
Neutral Theory
Definition
the theory that at the molecular level evolutionary changes and polymorphisms are mainly due to mutations that are nearly enough neutral with respect to natural selection that their behavior and fate are mainly determined by mutation and random drift
Term
Codon Bias
Definition
differences in the frequency of occurrence of synonymous codons in coding DNA
Term
Inbreeding
Definition
is reproduction from the mating of pairs who are closely related genetically
Term
Haplotype
Definition
a combination of alleles (DNA sequences) at adjacent locations (loci) on a chromosome that are inherited together
Term
Genetic Recombination
Definition
the production of new combinations of alleles, encoding a novel set of genetic information
Term
Parthenogenesis
Definition
a form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization
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