Biology Remediation Evolution and Natural Selection Review

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What is an adaptation?

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Any physical or behavioral characteristic that helps an organism to better survive.

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Which moth will be more successful in a soot-covered environment?

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Dark moth.

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What best describes mutations?

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Can be helpful or harmful.

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How is evolution defined?

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Theory that organisms have changed gradually over a long period of time to form new organisms.

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What is the gradual change in a population through adaptations over time called?

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Evolution.

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What is natural selection?

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The process where organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.

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What is the role of mutations in evolution?

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Mutations introduce genetic variation, which can be beneficial, harmful, or neutral.

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What is speciation?

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The process by which new species arise from existing species.

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What is directional selection?

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A type of natural selection that favors one extreme phenotype over the mean or other extreme phenotypes.

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What is genetic drift?

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A mechanism of evolution that refers to random changes in the frequency of alleles in a population.