Week 11: DNA Replication, Mutation, & Cancer-SHORT ANSWER (12 PTS)

In this class we discussed 4 mechanisms of evolution.  Match each mechanism to its impact on a population’s average fitness.

 A Facebook news story declares that eating chocolate increases the risk of bladder cancers.  You click on the article and find that it cites a study where rats who consumed more chocolate had an increased risk of cancer depending on how much they consumed.  Rats who consumed the most had a high risk for bladder cancer whereas rats who did not consume chocolate had an extremely low risk of bladder cancer.  Cancer only developed after chocolate was consumed. What can you conclude from this study?

Essay D. When scientists work on questions that are closely tied to identities important in humans, it become increasingly hard to be objective.  In class, we discussed Bateman’s principles (the idea that all males should be promiscuous and females coy) as an example of confirmation bias.  In the box below respond to the following prompts: A. Define confirmation bias (2 pts) B. What were the social norms in Darwin and Bateman’s times around women and men that could have influenced Bateman’s expectations for the results of his experiment? How do these beliefs manifest in Bateman’s principles?  (2 pts) C. Describe an example of confirmation bias in either Bateman’s original experiment and analysis or in the spread of Bateman’s principles. (2 pts)

There are many types of Natural selection and they act on traits in different ways. Assume there is selection acting on size of a wing in a bird.  For each type of selection match what will happen to the variation in wing size among individuals in the population over time.  Hint: think about the distributions we drew in class for each of these types of natural selection.

Essay D. When scientists work on questions that are closely tied to identities important in humans, it become increasingly hard to be objective.  In class, we discussed Bateman’s principles (the idea that all males should be promiscuous and females coy) as an example of confirmation bias.  In the box below respond to the following prompts: A. Define confirmation bias (2 pts) B. What were the social norms in Darwin and Bateman’s times around women and men that could have influenced Bateman’s expectations for the results of his experiment? How do these beliefs manifest in Bateman’s principles?  (2 pts) C. Describe an example of confirmation bias in either Bateman’s original experiment and analysis or in the spread of Bateman’s principles. (2 pts)

Week 11: DNA Replication, Mutation, & Cancer-SHORT ANSWER (12 PTS)

The specialized structure that stores pigments, water, inorganic ions and maintains turgor pressure is the. . .

When might unrelated individuals engage in apparently altruistic acts?

Week 10: Speciation, Taxonomy, and Systematics-SHORT ANSWER (15 PTS)