Evolution and Natural Selection Flashcards

Grade 10 · Science · Flashcards

Review key vocabulary and concepts for evolution, natural selection, and the evidence supporting evolutionary theory.

Flashcards

Evolution: Change in the heritable characteristics of a biological population over successive generations.
Natural selection: The mechanism of evolution: organisms with favorable heritable traits survive and reproduce more.
Adaptation: A heritable trait that increases an organism's fitness (survival and reproductive success) in its environment.
Fitness: An organism's reproductive success — how well it survives and passes on its genes.
Variation: Differences in traits among individuals; the raw material on which natural selection acts.
Heredity: The passing of traits from parents to offspring via genes; required for natural selection to work.
Speciation: The evolutionary process by which new, distinct species arise, often through reproductive isolation.
Homologous structures: Structural similarities across species that reflect common evolutionary ancestry (e.g., vertebrate forelimbs).
Vestigial structure: A structure that has lost its original function over evolutionary time (e.g., human tailbone, whale hip bones).
Fossil record: The preserved remains and traces of organisms; documents how life has changed over time.
Genetic drift: Random changes in allele frequencies in a population, especially significant in small populations.
Common descent: The principle that all living organisms share common ancestors; central to evolutionary theory.