Name: Patrick Wrenn Take home Exam
Anthropology 104: Biological Anthropology
Answer all of the questions to the fullest.
1. What are the three types of speciation? Explain each.
Allopatric: A new species evolves due to a geographic barrier (squirrels of the Grand Canyon).
Parapatric: There is no specific extrinsic barrier to gene flow. Mating is more likely to happen between geographical neighbors than with organisms in different parts of the population’s range. A new niche in an existing population. (plants adapting to contaminated soil, resulting in a new flowering time).
Sympatric: When new species evolve from another species while still inhabiting the same geographic region. (Flies that begun mating on hawthorns now have a population that mate on apples).
2. What is the difference between polygenic inheritance and Pleiotropy?
Polygenic: Traits influenced by genes at two or more loci.
Pleiotropy: When a single gene influences more than one characteristic.
3. Assume in a hypothetical situation there is a certain island that contains 5 types of sea lizards, each occupying a section of the coast with no opportunity for mating amongst species on the other side of the island, but mating occurs with species that are adjacent. What is this an example of?
This is an example of a ring species.
4. Cladistics and evolutionary systematics are two approaches to classification. How are they similar and how are they different? What are the benefits of using one over another?
Cladistics: Focused on specifically chosen derived characters.
Benefits: More explicitly and rigorously defines the kinds of homologies that yield the most useful information.
Evolutionary Systematics: Using both ancestral and derived characters.
Benef...
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...hese children to human life.
Biological anthropology is broken into six branches, paleoanthropology, human osteology, human biology, anthropological genetics, forensic anthropology, and primatology. Primatology is the scientific study of primates, both living and extinct. Since we ourselves are primates it is natural that we should understand how they communicate and interact with their young. It could help us gain insight into why we act the way we do with our off spring. Our bones can tell us a lot about ourselves; even a simple measurement can be essential for identifying stature and growth patterns. These studies of osteology can help us better determine the health of the bone structure in infants. Something as simple and easy as measuring a forearm and help prevent a life threatening illness from causing a young one’s death before any symptoms become apparent.
Isle Royal is located fifty-six miles north of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. It is the largest wilderness area in Michigan (USNPS, 2014). The island is surrounded by Lake Superior, which creates a cooler temperature. This results in arctic plant species growth on the island. There are only eighteen mammal species present on the island because most mammals cannot make the trip across the frozen great lake (USNPS, 2014). The need for an ice bridge is not the only environmental factor that is stopping the migration of animals; there is also the severe cold, and also wind and fog (Vucetich, 2012). Some species such as caribou and coyote have found the island to be too intense and have gone extinct (Vucetich, 2012). Due to the harsh weather and isolation of the island, humans have never regularly lived on the island (Vucetich, 2012). Some of species that are present such as the red squirrel are becoming their own subspecies due to its separation from the mainland (USNPS, 2014). The isolation of Isle Royal is what makes it a great place to conduct research, it has very low human interaction and the species that are on the island will have been and continue to be isolated from the mainland.
They evolved into 2 different species by many factors in nature. The factors include genetic drift, mutation, natural selection, and etc. Genetic drift involves the bottleneck effect and the founder effect. I hypothesize that a bottleneck effect took place in the island that the rodents were living in. A natural disaster must of happened and the rodents that had high fitness survived. Therefore since one population survived, that makes them two separate species. I also hypothesize that there was a founder effect in the population of the rodents. A small portion of rodents migrated to Nevis island and reproduced. When this happened this created a whole new population of rodents. Another reason that they could have been 2 different species can be due to gene flow. Some rodents could of migrated to Nevis island.
Chapter two consists of Darwin continuing his studies. He talks about variation in the natural world compared to the domesticated species. He defines species variation and says that every naturalist has a different idea of the definition. He explains to the reader that linking other species together by characteristics of variation is challenging because some are so similar but vary in other ways. Environmental conditions could be effecting the variation. Climate, temperature, the separation of the animals could transform them. The species changes over time and have chi...
The results of natural selection in Darwin 's finches and British Columbian sparrows change my view of species because every living animal changes to survive conditions that get in the way of normal life.
Feder and Park present a list of traits that are used by paleoanthropologists to distinguish the appearance of skeletal features and characterize these changes over time. Th...
comes from and how they evolved in the manner that they did. This type of
The truly unique thing about the Cambrian Explosion was the rapid generation of extremely diverse life forms. Life is generally classified with a system going from broad to specific description. Kingdom, the broadest classification, describes whether a given specimen is plant, animal, fungi, protist, or moneran. The next most specific indicator is phylum. The phyla indicate the body design of a taxonomical specimen. Humans, along with all other species that poses a spinal ...
Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains the general laws by which any given species transforms into other varieties and species. Darwin extends the application of his theory to the entire hierarchy of classification and states that all forms of life have descended from one incredibly remote ancestor. The process of natural selection entails the divergence of character of specific varieties and the subsequent classification of once-related living forms as distinct entities on one or many levels of classification. The process occurs as a species varies slightly over the course of numerous generations. Through inheritance, natural selection preserves each variation that proves advantageous to that species in its present circumstances of living, which include its interaction with closely related species in the “struggle for existence” (Darwin 62).
The Galapagos Islands, located about 600 miles west of continental Ecuador, contain a rich history of settlement and exploration and represent a living example of evolution that is still relevant today. For centuries, this chain of volcanic islands has been used uniquely by various cultures based off distinct needs. What has remained the same however is the fact that island isolation has forced many animal and plant species to adapt differently from one another based off their island’s environmental conditions, creating a living model of microevolution over time. Today, these models tend to be the primary resources used by biology professors when teaching their students evolutionary topics.
To do so, the anthropologist examines the overall sturdiness of the bones, as males tend to have larger bones and joint surface...
Anthropology is a study of mankind that goes beyond the fragment of ones skeletal remains. Anthropology Studies involved within this science include the culture and surroundings a person once lived in.Anthropology, (2014) A example scientist often conduct archaeological digs. Their findings reveal many different aspects of that person or person’s life. The weather a person could have been exposed to. The environment or activities that person might have participated in. The scope of life that can be recovered from human remains is astonishing. Forensic Science as a whole is an impressive and interesting science that can be used within many different realms.
...ous amount of information into many biological processes, our phylogenetic relationships and evolution (NHGRI, 2011).
...ship occurs, there is gene transfer between the organisms which is beneficial to the host cell as well as the symbiont.
...a much easier and more accurate approach to studying humans. By using quantifiable measures you can put a number on whatever you are studying rather than a vague guess, people want exact numbers and details. Anthropology is and will always be seen as a hard science.
Cultural anthropology has taught me a lot in such a short time. This class has been very eye opening to me and has made me think more about the different cultures around me and just how important it is to learn about them. One of the things I have learned is how religion is related to culture. Culture is behaviors of a community such as the food they make, the music they listen to, and the rituals they take part in. This can be very similar to religion because a culture is based off of their religious beliefs. Some cultures do not eat pig because it is against their religious beliefs. Some cultures listen to particular songs because it is based off of their religious beliefs. Another thing cultures relate closely to is languages. Without language