Natural Selection, traits favorable for a species surviving and reproducing in the wild were selected for, Evolution, the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations, The Fossil Record, the total collection of discovered fossils and their placement within Earth's geological strata, documenting the history, evolution, and distribution of life over time, Fossils, imprints or remains of organisms found in rock., Strata, horizontal rock layers, Law of Superposition, youngest layers of rock are on the top, and the oldest on the bottom., Catastrophism, natural disasters that wiped out some of the species, Paleontology, study of fossils, Extinction, the complete disappearance of a species from the Earth, Speciation, The emergence of a new species, Uniformitarianism, the idea that the Earth had been slowly and steadily transformed over time by a series of tiny changes, Erosion, the movement of sediments by wind and water., Adaptations, variations present in living organisms that aided in their survival, Acquired traits, that animals adapted to their environment by their muscles and organs changing over time due to their use or disuse.(false), Adaptive radiation, where a species rapidly diversifies into new forms, Niches, spaces and roles that organisms play within in an ecosystem, Artificial selection, humans selectively bred an organism for traits such as size, coloration, temperament, Super fecundity, the ability to produce many offspring, Mutation, the ultimate source of all new alleles, Fitness, reproductive success, Adaptation, a feature that is common in a population because it provides some improved function., Physical adaptations, structural differences in coloration, body shape, musculature, etc, Behavioral adaptations, include migration, or marking a territory., Physiologic adaptations, such as skin tanning, occur at the cell or tissue level in an organism, The Theory of Evolution, Survival depends, in part, on inherited traits, Individuals that reproduce the most will pass those traits on to their offspring., Variation, individuals within a population will vary in many of their traits., Overproduction, all species are capable of producing more offspring than the environment can support., Physiological stress, inappropriate levels of a critical environmental factor, Predation, when one organism is hunted and killed by another., Competition, the result of other organisms attempting to use the same resources., Sexual Selection, when the female (usually) responds to specific behaviors or physical traits, Optimal range, the right level of an environmental factor is present, Zone of Physiologic stress, levels of the factor are too high or too low., Zone of Intolerance, the population dies out, Stabilizing Selection, favors intermediate phenotypes, acting against extreme phenotypes, Directional selection, acts against individuals at one of the phenotypic extremes, Disruptive selection, favors individuals at both extremes of the phenotypic range, Genetic drift, a change in the gene pool of a population due to chance, Bottleneck effect, a loss of genetic diversity when a population is greatly reduced, Gene flow, the movement of individuals (migration) or gametes/spores between populations and can alter allele frequencies in a population, Biological species concept, a population or group of populations whose members have the potential to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, Morphological species concept, classifies organisms based on observable phenotypic traits, Ecological species concept, species are groups or populations that share the exact same ecological niche, Hybrids, Offspring of two different species, Phylogeny, the evolutionary history of a species or group of species, Phylogenetic tree, a hypothesis of evolutionary relationships within a group, Homologous structures, specific anatomical parts that show variations on a common design, Analogous structures, similar traits that are found in species not closely related, Vestigial organs, shrunken remnants of structures that were more useful in the ancestral form of a species., The hypothesis of endosymbiosis, that mitochondria and chloroplasts were formerly small prokaryotes that began living within larger cells

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