PSYC 2076 Chapter : Adolescent Psychology Chapter 3 The Brain And Cognitive Development Student
Document Summary
Bodies of living organisms are modified through the use or disuse of parts: inheritance of acquired characteristics. 1/14/2013 6:59:00 pm: selective breeding of organisms to encourage the occurrence of desirable traits, analogous to natural selection. The smallest unit of evolution: one common misconception about evolution is that individual organisms evolve during their lifetime, evolutionary processes (ex: natural selection) acts on individuals, but populations evolve. Sexual recombination: in sexually reproducing organisms, sexual recombination produces most of the variability in each generation. Variation within a population: discrete characters- classified on an either-or basis, ex: flower color in pea plants, quantitative characters: vary along a continuum within a population, ex: height, weight. Some individuals who are heterozygous at a particular locus have a greater fitness than homozygotes. Sickle-cell allele: causes mutations in hemoglobin, but also confers malaria resistance: frequency dependent selection. Genetic divergence: reproductive isolation, the existence of biological factors that impede members of two species from producing viable, fertile offspring, prezygotic barriers.
