Biological Evolution 3301

Midterm Exam #3 KEY

Section 1: Multiple choice, True/False. Read each question carefully and select the best answer
from the choices provided. Enter your answers on a scantron sheet. Make sure to put your name
on the scantron sheet.

1. Which of the following best describes the phylogenetic species concept?

a. Defining species that correspond to monophyletic groups on the tree of life
b. Defining species based on the way they look
c. Defining species based on interbreeding populations
d. Defining species based on historical definitions

2. What is Gene Flow?

a. Ability of an organism to procure multiple mates
b. Increase in the ploidy of an organism
c. Movement of genetic information from one population to another
d. Loss of genetic diversity due to gravity

3. What are the possible fates of a hybrid zone?

a. Long term persistence
b. Complete reproductive isolation (loss of hybrids)
c. Joining of the two populations
d. Hybrids form a new third species
e. All of the above

4. Speciation is always a very rapid process.

a. True
b. False

5. If I compared two genera of birds, one with sexual selection and one without sexual selection,
what would I expect to see?
a. The genus without sexual selection would have more species
b. The genus with sexual selection would have more species
c. The genus without sexual selection would have an unequal sex ratio
d. The genus with sexual selection would have an unequal sex ratio

6. What is the major cause of the changes resulting in speciation during peripatric speciation?
a. Artificial selection
b. Unequal sex ratio
c. Genetic Drift
d. Stabilizing selection

7. Which type of speciation is potentially the fastest?

a. Parapatric
b. Allopatric
c. Sympatric
d. Polyploid

8. An organism that reproduces only one time during its life has a _______________ life history.
a. Semelparous
 b. Iteroparous
c. Uberparous
d. Reliparous

9. What two values would I need to know to estimate the reproductive fitness of a population
with the life history from question #8? (mark both answers)
a. Average number of offspring
b. Number of mutalistic species
c. Odds of living to reproductive age
d. Inbreeding coefficient

10. If I examined the flowers of a dioecious plant what would I find?

a. Male and female structures in each flower
b. Flowers from different individuals would be either all male or all female
c. There would be no flowers
d. Flowers would be the same color as the leaves

11. What is the sex ratio for a randomly mating population?

a. Depends on the time of year
b. More females than males
c. More males than females
d. Roughly equal

12. A plant that evolves a chemical defense and so is no longer subject to predation by a group of
insects is an example of which type of coevolution?
a. Escape and Radiation Coevolution
b. Specific Coevolution
c. Generic Coevolution
d. Diffuse Coevolution

13. Which of the following conditions would tend to lead to an increase in pathogen virulence?
a. Origin of the pathogen from multiple sources
b. Decreased host resistance to the pathogen
c. Vertical transmission of the pathogen
d. Relative size of pathogen and host genomes

14. Many different noxious butterfly species that all look the same is an example of _________
mimicry?
a. Darwinian
b. Mullerian
c. Batesian
d. Wallacian

15. What would you expect to see if you evaluated the dN/dS (ratio of non-synonymous to
synonymous mutations) for a gene that had been subjected to strong purifying selection?
a. It would be higher than most genes
b. It would be among the genes with the lowest values
c. It could not be calculated

16. There is a simple relationship between the complexity of an organism and its genome size.
a. True
b. False
17. Which of the following is a mechanism by which new genes originate?
a. point mutation
b. gene duplication
c. incompatible chromosomes
d. genetic drift

18. Two genes that are descended from a single gene in a common ancestor are called _________.
a. paralogous
b. orthologous
c. twin genes
d. incompatible

19. What types of organisms have Hox genes?

a. Plants
b. All animals
c. Bacteria
d. Mammals

20. Which description below best describes gene co-option?

a. When a gene is duplicated and gains a new function
b. When a gene is no longer functional
c. When a single gene gains an additional function, resulting in pleiotropy
d. When a gene regulates expression of another gene

21. What is trans-regulation of a gene?

a. When evolution in the control elements of the gene itself cause a change in expression
b. When a gene duplication event causes twice as much product to be made
c. When a synonymous mutation causes a change in the protein product
d. When evolution of another gene that acts as a regulatory protein causes a change in
expression

22. Which of the following would be an example of a functional assay for a gene?
a. A protocol that stopped the transcription of a specific gene so that it could not be
expressed during development
b. A protocol that allows you to visualize the pattern of distribution for a particular
mRNA
c. A protocol that was designed to show the distribution pattern for a particular protein
product
d. A protocol that cataloged the amount and degree of variation due to environmental
conditions during development

23. Which of the following is not a reason why sister taxa look can look so different?
a. Evolution along separate lineages with no cladogenesis
b. Extinction of intermediate lineages
c. Saltation: immediate large morphology shift due to a small genetic change
d. Long term gene flow between two populations

24. What is required for the evolution of complexity?

a. Intermediate forms need to be adaptive
 b. Pleiotropy
c. Only neutral evolution can be occurring
d. Large amounts of gene flow

25. Are there any overall trends in evolution across all life forms?
a. No, but there are some very general trends over the entire course of evolution, such as
an increase in complexity
b. Yes, all new species are more complex than those that came before
c. Yes, all new species are larger than their ancestor species

Exam #3
Short Answer Questions. Each question is worth 3 points.
1. What is a species?
A variety of answers are acceptable: ie., a irreducible, genetically isolated, monophyletic
population of organisms

2. Under what circumstances might you find introgression?

A species hybrid zone with a small number of hybrids mating with both species

3. A single flightless bird species is found on Continent X. Continental drift splits Continent X
into two land masses resulting in two distinct species. What type of speciation is this?
Allopatric

4. What is it called when females choose a mate based on very specific behavioral or display
traits? Sexual selection

5. What happens to diversity within a population as competition increases?

It goes up (increases)

6. Why is some "non-coding" DNA highly conserved between distantly related species/
It has some sort of conserved function, such as regulation

7. What is the name for a gene that originated as a duplicate of another gene and then becomes
non-functional?
pseudogene

8. What is allometry?
A change in the relative rate of growth for a specific morphological feature

9. What mode of species origination is thought to be responsible for punctuated equilibrium?

peripatric

10. Define the term living fossil, and give an example.

A species that has remained morphologically the same for long periods of time. Shark, alligator,
coeleocanth, tadpole shrimp, etc.

Not-As-Short Answer Questions (3-4) sentences. Each question is worth 5 points.

1. What are the three types of barriers to gene flow? Give an example of each one.
1. Pre-mating barriers
a. species that don’t mate because of incompatible mating behaviors
b. species that don’t mate because of different ecological preferences
2. Post-mating/Pre-zygotic barriers
a. species that have incompatible genitalia
b. species with gametes that are incompatible
3. Post-zygotic barriers
 a. hybrids that are unable to procure a mate from either parents' species
b. sterile hybrids

2. I find a new species of a tree from the Amazon rainforest; a very stable environment with only
an occasional clearing in the canopy for new trees to fill. Based on this information predict the
expected life history strategy of this tree. Include information about frequency of reproduction,
investment in each offspring, and why you would expect this
The tree would most likely have an iteroparous life history, forming seeds throughout a
long life. This would increase the chances of at least a few of the seeds sprouting in or near an
opening in the canopy. Each seed would also have a relatively large energy investment, because
this would allow seedlings to grow very quickly initially and compete with other seedlings.

3. The phylogenies for a group of insects and a group of bacteria found inside the insects are
identical. Is coevolution occurring? If so, what type? What kind of relationship would you
expect to find between these insects and bacteria?
Yes, specific coevolution. These groups share a very close relationship so that when
speciation occurs in one lineage a comparable speciation event occurs in the other. This is most
likely an obligate mutualistic relationship, like a host-endosymbiont relationship.

4. List three different ways to visualize gene expression and what type of molecule is being
visualized. Which one is most useful in living organisms?
1. in-situ hybridization  mRNA
2. antibody staining  protein
3. reporter gene  reporter protein that is expressed along with the target gene, this
procedure it the most useful for living organisms
Bonus (3 pts): Briefly describe how I would discover genes that were under positive selection
pressure within a lineage of interest.
If you examined the dN/dS ratio for a number of orthologous genes between two groups of interest
you would find that most of them are evolving neutrally and have a relatively low dN/dS ration.
Genes that were under positive selection would have a significantly higher ratio.