Survival and reproduction of certain individuals in a population over others, who have favorable and inherited traits, over time leads to evolutionary change in the entire population.  This is the definition of….

When scientists seek to organize different animals into a ‘tree’ with branch points to represent how one species split off from another, they look at shared derived character traits to organize the different animals, they look at similarity in structure, similarity in chemical composition, to build a diagram, representing these close evolutionary relationships.  What is this diagram called?

Corkscrew -shaped bacteria are called _____________.

What are the three Domains of Life on Earth?

Structures shared by different organisms that perform different functions, but are similar in structure, and indicate a common ancestral origin. Example:  Vertebrate forelimb structures from a horse, a human, a fish, and a whale.

______________disease is caused by an infection of a corkscrew-shaped spirillium bacteria known as Borrelia berdorferi

A population of one species disperses throughout an area and each finds a unique and distinct niche or isolated habitat.  Over time, the varied demands of their new habitats leads to multiple speciation events originating from one common ancestor.

The point at which a split occurs in a phylogenetic tree, called a _______ _____, represents where a single lineage evolved into a distinct new one.

Phylogeny is the study of…

______________________ may represent the earliest forms of life on Earth.  Fossil evidence of their presence starts about 3.5 billion years ago.  These are large biofilms, a multilayered sheet of prokaryotic organisms.