SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR EXAM 1, BIOCORE(BCOR) 12 SECTION A, SPRING 2011

Exam will have 40 multiple-choice questions.   Answers to these questions be provided in a separate link soon.

Dave Barrington

1. Which of the following is used to infer common ancestry?

a. shared derived characters

b. shared primitive characters

c. unique derived characters

d. unique primitive characters

2. Which of the following is an example of cladogenesis?

a. deafness in Martha’s Vineyard people

b. low allele diversity in cheetahs

c. increase in dark forms of the pepper moth

d. antelope squirrels on two sides of the Grand Canyon

3. Whch of the following is based on reproductive biology?

a. the ecological species concept

b. the phylogenetic species concept

c. the biological species concept

d. the morphological species concept

4. Some biologists study speciation, some study phylogeny. What’s the difference?

a. Speciation addresses cladogenesis, phylogeny addresses anagenesis.

b. Speciation uses parsimony, phylogeny uses homology.

c. Speciation is a process, phylogeny is a pattern.

d. Speciation is based on DNA sequences, phylogeny is based on morphology.

5. What features of the Galapagos finches DID NOT find a place in Darwin’s thinking about evolution?

a. The finches all had feathers.

b. The finches’ bills each related to their diets.

c. The finches’ closest relatives were in the nearby Andes.

d. All of the finches were endemic to the Galapagos Islands.

6. What was Henslow’s role in Darwin’s success?

a. He published Darwin’s Origin of Species

b. He defended Darwin’s ideas to skeptical scientists.

c. He gave him insight into the long geological history of the earth.

d. He found him a place as a naturalist on the Beagle.i

7. Which of the following correctly represents the role of the Cichlid fish in understanding evolution?

a. Sexual selection by females in the same lake led to divergence of species.

b. Directional selection by differences in pollution in the lake led to divergence of species.

c. Stabilizing selection maintained species integrity in different lakes.

d. Disruptive selection in different lakes led to divergence of species.

8. If the dominant and recessive allele frequencies of a gene in a population are both 0.5, which of the following genotype frequencies, if they persist between generations, would be evidence that the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium?

a. AA 25%, Aa 50%, aa 25%

b. AA 10%, Aa 80%, aa 10%

c. AA 33.3%, Aa 33.3%, aa 33.3%

a. AA 75%, Aa 0%, aa 25%