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| a group of related organisms that can interbreed and produce fertile, viable offspring |
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| physical remains of part or all of once-living organisms, mostly bones and teeth, that have become mineralized by the replacement of organic with inorganic materials |
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| the specific area of the natural environment in which an organism lives |
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| changes in physical structure, function, or behavior that allow an organisms or species to survive and reproduce in a given environment |
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| the process by which some organisms, with features that enable them to adapt to the environment, preferentially survive and reproduce, thereby increasing the frequency of those features in the population |
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| the diversification of an ancestral group of organisms into new forms that are adapted to specific environments |
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| refers to a characteristic or feature that is natural to a given population or environment |
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| the study of Earth's physical history |
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| the study of extinct life-forms through the analysis of fossils |
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| the classification of organisms into a system that reflects degree of relatedness |
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| the study and classiication of living organisms to determine their evolutionary relationships with one another |
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| the study of a population's features and vital statistics, including birth rate, death rate, population size, and population density |
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| a specialty within the field of biology; the study of the process of change in organisms |
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| the theory that processes that occured in the geologic past are still at work today |
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| the doctrine asserting that cataclysmic events (such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and floods) rather than evolutionary processes, are responsible for geologic changes throughout Earth's history |
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| a group of related species |
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| first proposed by Lamarck, the theory of evolution through the inheritance of acquired characteristics in which an organism can pass on features acquired during its lifetime |
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| as proposed by Darwin, the units of inheritance, supposedly accumulated in the gametes so they could be passed to offspring |
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| an outdated, disreputed theory that the phenotype of an offspring was a uniform blend of the parents' phenotypes |
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| the basic unit of inheritance; a sequence of DNA on a chromosome, coded to produce a specific protein |
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| one or more alternative forms of a gene |
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| refers to an allele that is expressed in an organism's phenotype and that simultaneously masks the effects of another allele, if another one is present |
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| an allele that is expressed in an organism's phenotype if two copies are present, but is masked if the dominant allele is present |
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| the basic principles associated with the transmission of genetic material, forming the basis of genetics, including the law of segregation and the law of independent assortment |
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| the genetic makeup of an organism; the combination of alleles for a given gene |
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| the physical expression of the genotype; it may be influenced by the environment |
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| the strand of Dna found in the nucleus of eukaryotes that contains hundreds or thousands of genes |
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| a unified theory of evolution that combines genetics with natural selection |
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| a specialty within the field of genetics; it focuses on the changes in gene frequencies and the effects of those changes on adpatation and evolution |
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| a random change in a gene or chromosome, creating a new trait that may be advantageous, deleterious, or neutral in its effects on the organism |
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| admixture, or the exchange of alleles between two populations |
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| the random change in allele frequency from one generation to the next, with greater effect in small populations |
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| deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) |
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Definition
| a double-stranded molecule that provides the genetic code for an organism, consisting of phosphate, deoxyribose sugar, and four types of nitrogen bases |
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| wide regional or global spread of infectious disease |
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