Name:______________________________________________

15-3 Darwin Presents His Caseopossum

1. The birds Darwin found turned out to be all _______________________
2. Why did Darwin not publish right away? ___________________________
3. Who gave Darwin an incentive to publish? __________________________
4. What was the title of Darwin's book? ___________________________
5. Describe a variation found among cows: ________________ how about plants? ______________________
6. What is artificial selection? _______________________________________________________
7. What does the "struggle for existence" mean? ___________________________________
8. What is an adaptation? ______________________________________________________
9. Adaptations can be _____________________________ or structural, or eve n behavioral.
10. What happens to individuals that are not well suited to their environment? _______________________

11. Over time, natural selection results in ____________________________ in the inherited characteristics of a population, which increase a species _____________________________________ in its environment.
12. Darwin proposed that over long periods, _______________________ __________________________ produces organisms that have different _________________________, establish different _______________________, or occupy different habitats.
13. If we look far enough back in history, we could find the common ancestor of all living things. This is known as the principle of ____________________ _______________________________.
14. Darwin argued that living things have been __________________________ on Earth for millions of years.

15. Evidence for this process could be found in the ______________________ record, the ____________________ distribution of living species, __________________________ ___________________________ of living organisms, and similarities in early development, or _______________________________________.

16. Darwin saw ______________________________ as a record of the history of life on Earth.
17. Researchers have discovered many hundreds of __________________ __________________ that document various intermediate stages in the evolution of modern species from organisms that are now _______________.
18. ________________ structures are the one type of evidence for the evolution of _______________ things.
19. Structures that have different mature forms but develop from the same embryonic tissue are called ___________________________ ________________________________
20. Describe vestigial organs.______________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
21. Give an example of a vestigial organ: ____________________________________
22. Embryos look similar showing that the embryonic cells develop in the same _____________________ and in similar _________________________________.


23. Summary of Darwin's Theory
-Individual organisms differ, some of this _________________________________ is heritable.
-Organisms produce more offspring than can ____________________________________
-Because more organisms are produced than can survive, they _________________________ for limited resources
-Each unique organism has different advantages and disadvantages. Individuals best suited for their environment survive and ____________________________________________. These organisms pass their heritable ________________________________________ to their offspring.
-Species alive today are __________________________________ with modification from ancestral species.

24. Scientific advances in many fields of biology, along with geology and physics, have ______________________ and _________________________________ most of Darwin's hypothesis.
25. Evolution is often called the grand ____________________________________theory of life sciences
Interpreting Data (see fig 15-14, p 383)
26. Which animals has a larger range, the coypu or the muskrat? _________________________________
Which one is native to North America? __________________________________________
Which animal would you find in the northern area of S. America? __________________________
27. He (Darwin) realized that similar animals in different locations were the product of different lines of ____________________________________ descent.

Testing Yourself

1. The ability of an organism to survive and reproduce in its natural environment is called:
a. natural selection b. evolution c. homologous d. fitness

2. Which of the following Is an important concept in Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection?
a. Struggle for Existence
b. Species change over time
c. Descent with modification
d. both a & b e. a, b, and c

3. Which of the following does NOT provide evidence that living things have been evolving for millions of years?
a. fossil record
b. natural variation within a species
c. geographic distribution of species
d. homologous structures of living organisms
e. similarities of embryological development

4. A bird's wings are homologous to a(n):
a. fish's tailfin b. alligator's claws c. dog's front legs d. mosquito's wing

5. Which would an animal breeder use to produce cows that give more milk?
a. overproduction b. genetic isolation c. acquired characteristics d. artificial selection

6. Fitness is a result of:
a. adaptations b. common descent c. homologies d. natural selection