Week 2 Vocabulary

Change over time; the process by which modern organisms have descended from ancient organisms

• Biogeography

• Evolution

• Fossil

• Sediment

• Preserved remains of, or traces of, ancient organisms.

• Fossil

• Homologous Structure

• Analogous Structure

• Natural Selection

• Selective breeding of plants and animals to promote the occurrence of desirable traits in offspring

• Natural Selection

• Artificial Selection

• Vestigial Structures

• Fossil

• Heritable characteristics that increase an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce in an environment.

• Evolution

• Fitness

• Artificial Selection

• Adaptation

Process by which organisms that are most suited to their environment survive and reproduce most successfully; also called survival of the fittest.

• Natural Selection

• Fitness

• Evolution

• Sediment

• How well an organism can survive and reproduce in its environment

• Adaptation

• Sediment

• Fitness

• Fossil

• Body parts that share a common function, but not an evolutionary history.

• Evolution

• Analogous Structures

• Vestigial Structures

• Homologous Structures

Structure that is inherited from ancestors but which has lost much or all of its original function.

• Vestigial Structures

• Analogous Structures

• Homologous Structures

• Evolution

Structures that are similar in different species of common ancestors.

• Analogous Structures

• Vestigial Structures

• Homologous Structures

• Adaptation

Study of past and present distribution of organisms

• Fitness

• Adaptation

• Evolution

• Biogeography