Chapter 7 - Key Terms, Part 1 of 2

Website Notes: This exercise requires Netscape Navigator 4.x (or greater) or Internet Explorer 4.x (or greater).
This exercise asks you to match the key term in the left-hand column with its correct definition in the right-hand column. Do this by typing the number of the key term in the box beside its correct definition.

Press Check answers to see if you have answered correctly
Press Continue to advance to the next group of key terms.
Press Try again to clear all the checkboxes on the page.
1. Adaptation (p. 185)   The total disappearance of a species or higher taxon.
2. Adaptive breakthrough (p. 191)   Deoxyribonucleic acid, the double helix molecule that carries chemically coded genetic information and is passed from generation to generation.
3. Chromosome (p. 189)   The generalization that body size tends to increase during the evolution of a group of animals.
4. Cope's rule (p. 198)   Mammals that carry their immature offspring in a pouch.
5. DNA (p. 189)   The presence in two different groups of animals or plants of organs that have the same ancestral origin but serve different functions.
6. Dollo's law (p. 204)   An evolutionary innovation that affords a group of organisms a special ecologic opportunity and often leads to the evolutionary radiation of that species.
7. Evolutionary convergence (p. 198   A unit of inheritance consisting of a segment of DNA that performs a particular function.
8. Evolutionary radiation (p. 191)   A sex cell (egg or sperm) that carries half the normal complement of chromosomes and combines with another sex cell to produce a new individual possessing the normal complement.
9. Extinction (p. 190)   A feature of an organism that serves one or more functions useful to the organism.
10. Gamete (p. 190)   One of several elongate bodies in which DNA is concentrated within the nucleus of a cell.
11. Gene (p. 189)   The rapid origin of many new species or higher taxa from a single ancestral group.
12. Gene pool (p. 190)   The rule that any substantial evolutionary change is virtually irreversible because genetic changes are not likely to be reversed in an order exactly opposite to the order in which they originally developed.
13. Homology (p. 188)   The evolution of similar features in two or more different biological groups or taxa.
14. Marsupial mammals (p. 198)   An episode of large-scale extinction in which large numbers of species disappear in a few million years or less.
15. Mass extinction (p. 194)   The sum total of the genetic components of a population.

   

[CH 7 OSG]