Question 1: Describe the basic process of science. What steps are involved?
Question 2: What is a hypothesis? How is it developed? What makes a hypothesis useful? What do we do to hypotheses in science? Why?
Question 3: What is a species? Why is this concept useful in biology? How do we identify species (the biological species concept) in biology?
Question 4: List and explain the five lines of evidence for evolution.
Question 5: How did Darwin gather the evidence for his Theory of Natural Selection? Why did it take so long for him to publish? What pushed him to publish?
Question 6: What is the process of evolution? How does it work? At what level does evolution operate (genes, individuals, populations)? Explain.
Question 7: What is a fossil? What does it tell us about life on earth?
Question 8: How do we know how old fossils are? What mechanisms do we use to correlate or date fossils?
Question 9: What is a mammal? What characteristics do mammals share? Which of these characteristics can be seen in a fossil? Why?
Question 10: What are the three groups of mammals? How are they similar and different? Where would we find these organisms?
Question 11: Compare and contrast asexual and sexual reproduction. What are the advantages of each? Why is sexual reproduction the most common pattern among organisms?
Question 12: What is evolutionary fitness? How is it measured? What is a "sneaker male"? Give some examples of these individuals.
Question 13: How is DNA used to make evolutionary trees? Why would we want to do this? What problems does this represent for paleontologists?
Question 14: What is a molecular clock? How does it work? Give an example of one use of the molecular clock.
Question 15: Why is mitochondrial DNA different from nuclear DNA? What does the mitochondrial DNA patterns tell us about human evolution?
Question 16: Define adaptation. How do adaptations occur in a population? Give several examples of adaptations and how they were acquired.