BIOL1130 Study Guide - Final Guide: Commensalism, Thymine, Primary Production
7 Jun 2018
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Key Terms List
BIOL1130
Chapter 32 – Evolving Earth
• Trace Fossils: fossilized traces of past organisms.
• Chemical Fossils: fossils including the organic compounds formed by past organisms.
• Fossil Mould: when rock forms itself around the remains of an organism, leaving an
impression of the organism in the rock.
• Fossil Cast: when other materials, e.g. silica, fill the fossil mould.
• Amber: the hardened resin of conifer trees.
• The Eras: from oldest to youngest and their periods
o Precambrian – 4560 to 545 m.y.a.
o Palaeozoic
▪ Cambrian – 545 to 495
▪ Ordovician – 495 to 440
▪ Silurian – 440 to 417
▪ Devonian – 417 to 354
▪ Carboniferous – 354 to 292
▪ Permian – 292 to 250
o Mesozoic
▪ Triassic - 250 to 205
▪ Jurassic – 205 to 142
▪ Cretaceous – 142 to 65
o Cenozoic
▪ Paleogene – 65 to 23
• Oligocene
• Eocene
• Paleocene
▪ Neogene – 23 to 1.8
• Miocene
• Pliocene
▪ Quarternary – 1.8 to recent
• Pleistocene
• Holocene
• Radiometric Dating: Quantitative determination of geologic age by means of
radioactivity.
o Radioactive isotopes are counted by their half-lives and so it is possible to date
any radioactive element by counting the number of isotopes left.
• Magnetic Reversals: a reversion of the earth’s magnetic field, either being in normal or
reversed polarity.
o The pattern of these reversals in documented in the magnetism of the rock
sequence formed over the geologic time scale.
• Plate Tectonics: the earth’s crust and lithosphere are divided into a number of plates.
• Gondwana: the first southern supercontinent
• Laurasia: the combined northern landmasses during the Palaeozoic
• Pangaea: Laurasia and Gondwana combined
• Chert: gels of silica that precipitated on ancient sea-floors, full of Precambrian fossils.
• Acritrach: small organic fossils, present from approximately 1,400 to 3,200 million
years ago to the present. Their diversity reflects major ecological events such as the
appearance of predation and the Cambrian explosion.
• Graptolites: Extinct colonial animals with skeletons of chitin
• Trilobites: extinct arthropods with hard skeletal parts, large eyes, long antennae and
appendages. Extremely common.
• Crinoids: part of the Echinoderms, stalked animals.
• Nautiloids: the earliest cephalopods, with long, tapering, cone-shaped shells.
• Ammonoids: Other cephalopods
• Ostracoderms: Ordovician jawless fishes
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Therapsids: a fossil reptile of a Permian and Triassic order, the members of which are
related to the ancestors of mammals.
• Thecodonts: the first vertebrates to walk on two legs
• Biogeographic Regions: characteristic regions inhabited by unique forms of life.
Botanical Regions
Zoological Regions
Boreal
Holarctic
Palaearctic
Nearctic
Palaeotropical
Ethiopian
Oriental
Neotropical
Neotropical
Australian
Australian
• Wallace’s Line: the clear line between the Indo-Malaysian and Austro-Malaysian
regions.
Chapter 31 –Evolving Life
• Phylogeny: the pattern of evolutionary relationships of organisms.
• Systematics: the field in which phylogeny is studied
• Taxonomy: the classification and naming of organisms
• Biota: the collective term for all organisms in an area
• Endemic: having evolved in a particular area and occurring nowhere else.
• Phylogenetic tree or Cladogram: a diagram that shows the branching nature of the
evolutionary relationships between organisms.
• Clade: a group of organisms related by descent
• Primitive: A more general character in the phylogenetic tree that evolved in the more
remote past. These characters are referred to as plesiomorphic.
• Synapomorphies: shared advanced characters (evolutionary characters shared by
characters on a branch)
• Automorphies: characters unique to a species
• Comparative Morphology: the comparison of body form, including the study of
development.
• Vestigial Organs: rudimentary organs with no apparent function; they are also clues to
evolutionary relationships when comparing organisms.
• Divergent Evolution: the evolution of different species from a common ancestral
species, supported by comparative morphology
• Homologous: structures that have the same basic plan but not necessarily the same
function. They indicate common inheritance.
• Convergent Evolution: the independent development of similar structures in unrelated
or distantly related organisms.
• Analogous: structures that have a similar function as a result of convergence.
• Parallel Evolution: closely related organisms that independently evolve similar
features.
• Parsimony: when faced with conflicting observations, choose the simplest explanation
– William of Ockam
• Pyrimidine: Thymine (T) and Cytosine (C) derive from this basic crystalline compound.
• Purine: Adenine (A) and Guanine (G) derive from this basic crystalline compound.
• Transitions: changes from one purine to another and from one pyrimidine to another.
• Transversions: changes between purines and pyrimidines
• Types of DNA
o Mitochondrial DNA – mtDNA
o Chloroplast DNA – cpDNA
o Nuclear-encoded RNA: Nuclear DNA encodes RNA
▪ Ribosomal RNA – rRNA
• Molecular Clock: neutral mutations that accumulate at a near constant rate, allowing
them to measure evolutionary time.
• Homologies: groups of organisms that have characters in common.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Silurian 440 to 417: devonian 417 to 354, carboniferous 354 to 292, permian 292 to 250. Their diversity reflects major ecological events such as the appearance of predation and the cambrian explosion. Graptolites: extinct colonial animals with skeletons of chitin: trilobites: extinct arthropods with hard skeletal parts, large eyes, long antennae and appendages. Australian: wallace"s line: the clear line between the indo-malaysian and austro-malaysian regions. Each taxon is given a latinised name: codes of nomenclature: international sets of rules that govern the naming process of taxa. Structural diversity: (plant communities) focuses on variations in the size and shape of plants irrespective of the species. Intraspecific competition: competition between members of a species. Interspecific competition: competition between members of different species in the same geographic space: exploitative competition: when organisms use up near all of a mutual resource and so make it scarce. Succession: when species replace another in an area.
