MUTATIONS

Finals Project

How does the environment affect the evolution of a species?

Why is biodiversity important to the Earth and to humans?

Natural selection works upon mutations within the population of the species to bring about the adaptation. Over time, the changes can be great enough that the population evolves into a new species.

How do mutations and environment drive evolution?

Mutations can change the DNA and the environment when it is in hard conditions, can wipe out the organisms who can't live.

How do genetics and the environment work together for the survival of a species?

Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an important role to play. For example, Healthy ecosystems can better withstand and recover from a variety of disasters.

Variation: Tall animals vs short animals

Environmental factors: All food is at the top of trees

Natural selection: Shorter animals will starve, because they cannot reach the food.

The taller organism would survive because they are able to reach the food and live in the environment

Why do some offspring survive and others don’t in a changing ecosystem?

What is biodiversity, how do humans affect it, and how does it affect humans?

Because when the environment begins to change, the offspring's that don't survive cannot adapt to what the environment is changing into, so it will not survive. Compared to an offspring that can survive, it is able to adapt and survive.

Human activities are responsible for most of the loss in biodiversity throughout the world. With an increasing population, we are consuming more and more natural resources.

How do genes (DNA) explain how different species are related?

How does the fossil record reveal information and evidence of evolution?

Because DNA is a long strand of nucleotides which form the genes that make up chromosomes. Scientists compare DNA from living organisms to identify similarities among species

The fossils tell about that organism in the past and also scientists can determine how that species will evolve in the future

What can fossils tell us about diversity of organisms in the past and the future?

It tells how the fossils species has evolved to the present and how it will evolve in the future

Why scientists are interested in understanding how closely related organisms are to each other.

Scientists are always interested in the wise they are curious. There always willing to find different discoveries

How does DNA reveal information and evidence of evolution?

How is it that there are millions of different species on earth today yet all species descended from a common ancestor?

A cell is the smallest structural and functional unit of an organism

Living cells are found everywhere on this planet unless the area is sterile. A genotype is a combination of alleles situated on corresponding chromosomes that determines a specific trait, the phenotype is the physical traits actually being shown

What role do mutations play in genetic variability? Why is genetic variability an essential component of natural selection / evolution?

Increasing genetic variation and the environmental effects on that variation form the basis for natural selection. Within a given population, there exists a normal degree of genetic variation that may or may not make an individual more adapted to the environment or, more importantly, changes in the environment.

How can population growth be connected to evolution?

Because a genetic population is described as the sum of gene frequencies for all the genes represented by that population, it follows that for evolution of a species to occur the gene frequencies of that population must undergo change.

How the recent discoveries and genetic support Darwin's original theory of common ancestry?

The similarities in DNA to see how much DNA we share with other organisms

What is the effect of a changing climate on organisms and their evolution?

There could be a decrease in a population of a certain species because they aren't able to survive in the climate that's changing. For example, polar bears that live in the arctic could not survive in a very hot climate rather than a snake, that could.