1. which of the following is true of a population that is evolving by means of natural selection? (1 point)
a.)acquired characteristics are passed down from parent to offspring.
b.)organisms best adapted to their environment have the highest fitness.
c.)allele frequencies of all mutations are continuously increasing.
d.)alleles become more or less common in the population through a series of chance occurrences.

2. which of the following explains the relationship between alleles and natural selection? (1 point)
a.) alleles control an organism’s genotype. natural selection works directly on the genotype.
b. )alleles control an organism’s genotype. natural selection works directly on the phenotype.
c.) alleles control an organism’s phenotype. natural selection works directly on the genotype.
d.)alleles control an organism’s phenotype. natural selection works directly on the phenotype.

3. which of the following must occur in order for speciation to take place? (1 point)
a.) populations within a species must be reproductively isolated.
b.)populations within a species must be geographically isolated.
c.) populations within a species must be behaviorally isolated.
d. )populations within a species must be temporally isolated.

4. which of the following describes an adaptation? (1 point)
a. an adaptation increases the fitness of the individual
b. an adaptation decreases the fitness of the individual
c. an adaptation does not affect the fitness of an individual
d. an adaptation results from genetic drift

5. what does each node on a cladogram represent? (1 point)
a. the point at which a derived character appeared
b. the point at which a new clade begins
c. the point at which two groups shared a common ancestor
d. the point at which two groups no longer look like each other

6. which of the following is not an observation that was made by darwin? (1 point)
a. different animals living in similar environments often had similar characteristics
b. closely related animals living in different environments often had different features
c. fossilized, ancient creatures sometimes had similar features to living creatures
d. all living things share a universal genetic code

7. what is the principle of common descent? (1 point)
a. the principle of common descent is the idea that all living and extinct organisms shared a common ancestor at some point in their evolutionary history.
b. the principle of common descent is the idea that organisms that evolve in the same environment will have the same characteristics.
c. the principle of common descent is the idea that the fittest members of a population will survive and produce more offspring.
d. the principle of common descent is the idea that organisms evolve at a slow and steady rate.

8. the area in which a population of white and brown mice live has started getting much more snow than it has in the past. if this trend continues, what would you expect to happen to the alleles that code for white and brown fur? (1 point)
a. the allele for brown fur would probably increase as genetic drift works on the population.
b. the allele for white fur would probably increase as genetic drift works on the population .
c. the allele for brown fur would probably increase as natural selection works on the population.
d. the allele for white fur would probably increase as natural selection works on the population.

9. at one time, there were many more cheetahs than there are today. about 10,000 years ago, a change in climate caused all but a relatively small number of cheetahs to go extinct. what type of evolutionary mechanism acted on the remaining cheetahs? (1 point)
a. the founder effect
b. the bottleneck effect
c. genetic equilibrium
d. punctuated equilibrium

10. two important patterns of macroevolution are (1 point)
rna world and microfossils.
phylogeny and cladistics.
adaptive radiation and convergent evolution.
geographic and temporal isolation.