Learning Outcomes

Question 1

How is biological information (genes and traits) selected, transmitted, and changed in individuals and in populations?

Question 2

What is the consequence of selecting or changing the information over time?

Question 3

What strategies do organisms use to survive, grow, and maximize reproductive success?
How do organisms apply these strategies across the ecosystem?

Question 4

How do our world views shape our understanding of scientific evidence?

Question 5

Exploration of Indigenous perspectives on the biology of ecosystems and the impact of human activity.

Question 6

Discuss the hypotheses for the origin of biological molecules and describe the Urey-Miller experiment

Question 7

Explain the ecological importance of the shift to an oxygen atmosphere and the reasons for the slow rise of oxygen

Question 8

Describe the first eukaryotes and timing of major events in the history of life

Question 9

Describe the explosions of life (for example Cambrian)

Question 10

explain the criteria used to define mass extinctions and explain the evolutionary importance of mass extinctions

Question 11

where does biological diversity come from

Question 12

what is evolution and how do we study it

Question 13

where did the idea of evolution by natural selection come from and what ideas does it rely on?

Question 14

what are the required conditions for evolution by natural selection to occur

Question 15

Define evolution as the change in allele frequencies in a population over generations

Question 16

Explain the process of evolution by natural selection in your own words

Question 17

Describe the importance of existing variation within a population to the process of natural selection

Question 18

Explain why heritable variation leading to differential fitness is essential for the process of evolution

Question 19

Describe the important historical contexts that preceded the proposed theory of evolution by national selection from Darwin and Wallace

Question 20

Explain what alleles and genes are and how their expression results in different phenotypes

Question 21

Explain mendel’s genetic crosses (monohybrid cross and text cross) and the associated genotypic and phenotypic ratios

Question 22

Explain how meisos determines the frequency and genotype of gametes of homozygous and heterozygous individuals

Question 23

explain the difference between dominant and recessive alleles

Question 24

explain the difference between incomplete dominance and co dominance and how these affect phenotypic ratios

Question 25

Be able to calculate allele and genotypic frequencies for a population

Question 26

Be able to explain HWE is a null hypothesis for evolutionary change

Question 27

Describe in your own words the major assumptions of Hardy Weinberg equilibrium and how violations of assumptions affect testing for HWE

Question 28

Be able to use the HWE equation to calculate and predict allele and genotype frequencies for populations assumed to be in equillibrium

Question 29

Understand how to apply the HWE equation to determine whether populations appear to be in HWE over multiple time points.

Question 30

Explain genetic drift and why it is more impactful in small populations

Question 31

Distinguish the general differences between directional, disruptive, stabilizing, and frequency-dependant selection

Question 32

Explain non-random mating including inbreeding and sexual selection