Biology · Science General

Evolution and Biological Adaptation

1,354 Questions

Evolution and biological adaptation focus on natural selection, speciation events, and how organisms adjust to environmental changes over time. These foundational biology concepts appear frequently in general science sections of civil services and school board examinations. Use these questions to study evolutionary theories, ancestral traits, and the fossil record.

Natural selection mechanismsSpeciation event examplesBiological adaptation traitsPanspermia hypothesis conceptsFossil record analysisMate selection theories

Evolution and Biological Adaptation Questions

Multiple choice

Theory of panspermia explains that

  1. Life originated from pre-existing life

  2. God created life on earth

  3. Life originated spontaneously from non-living things

  4. Life spores arrived on the earth from some other planets
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

Theory of panspermia explains that life spores arrived on the earth from some other planets.

Multiple choice

Which one is linked to evolution?

  1. Extinction

  2. Competition

  3. Variation

  4. Reproduction

  5. -
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Variations are any difference between cells, individual organisms, or groups of organisms of any species caused either by genetic differences (genotypic variation) or by the effect of environmental factors on the expression of the genetic potentials (phenotypic variations).They finally lead to evolution.

Multiple choice

Which of the following is not a concept of Lamarck?

  1. Environmental pressure causes variation.

  2. Rate and survival of organism is different due to variation.

  3. Inheritance of acquired character.

  4. If an organ is used constantly, it will continuously increase its size.

  5. -
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Variations was the idea descibed by Hugo De Vries.

Multiple choice

What is Darwin’s explanation on the way in which evolution occurs?

  1. God determines which species should evolve.

  2. Adaptations enable one species to produce more offsprings by natural selection.

  3. Certain species undergo mutations.

  4. The traits used most often persist longer.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
B Correct answer
Explanation

Darwin explained that adaptations enable one species to produce more offsprings by natural selection.

Multiple choice

Which of the following provides the most reasonable explanation for the assertion in the first paragraph that evolutionary history “obviously” did not act on PTC?

Directions: Read the passage and answer the question.

In nearly all human populations a majority of individuals can taste the artificially synthesized chemical phenylthiocarbonide (PTC). However, the percentage varies dramatically – from as low as 60% in India to as high as 95% in Africa. That this polymorphism is observed in non - human primates as well indicates a long evolutionary history which although obviously not acting on PTC, might reflect evolutionary selection for taste discrimination of other, more significant bitter substances, such as certain toxic plants. A somewhat more puzzling human polymorphism is the genetic variability in earwax, or cerumen which is observed in two varieties. Among European populations 90% of individuals have a sticky yellow variety rather than a dry, gray one, whereas in northern China these numbers are approximately the reverse. Perhaps like PTC variability, cerumen is an incidental expression of something more adaptively significant. Indeed, the observed relationship between cerumen and odorous bodily secretions denote that during the course of human evolution, genes affecting body secretions, including cerumen, came under selective influence.

  1. PTC being an artificially synthesised chemical, it cannot be linked to evolutionary history of mankind.

  2. Most humans lack sufficient taste sensitivity to discriminate between PTC and bitter chemicals occurring naturally.

  3. The sense of taste in humans is not as discriminating as that in non - human primates.

  4. Unlike non - human primates, humans can discriminate intellectually between toxic and nontoxic bitter substances. In the first sentence the author points out that PTC is an artificially synthesized chemical; thus, PTC has clearly not existed long enough to play any part whatsoever in the evolution of taste discrimination among primates.
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

In the first sentence, the author points out that PTC is an artifi cially synthesised chemical; thus, PTC has clearly not existed long enough to play any part whatsoever in the evolution of taste discrimination among primates.

Multiple choice

Directions: The following question consists of a set of four statements. One or more of the statements may have an error of grammar or syntax. Select the statement(s) having the error.

(A) Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food etc., as the only possible causes of variation. (B) Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species, have to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation. (C) It is quite conceivable that a naturalist might come to the conclusion that species have not been independently created, but had descended from other species. (D) Yet it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure of several species.

  1. Only A

  2. Only C

  3. A, B and C

  4. All of these

  5. None of these
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

‘External conditions’ in A are a possible ‘cause’, not ‘causes’. ‘That’ in B is redundant. ‘Have’ and ‘had’ in C are out of sync.

Multiple choice

Which of the following are a classical example of adaptive radiation in development of new species?

  1. Darwin finches

  2. Marsupials of Australia

  3. Giant turtles

  4. All of the above

  5. -
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

Adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral founder species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, creates new challenges or opens new environmental niches. There are now at least 13 species of finches on the Galapagos Islands, each filling a different niche on different islands. All of them have evolved from one ancestral form.

Multiple choice

Abiogenesis is the

  1. origin of life from non-living organisms

  2. origin of life from living organisms

  3. origin of viruses and microbes

  4. spontaneous generation
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

The original evolution of life or living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances suggests abiogenesis.

Multiple choice

Biological concept of species is mainly based on

  1. reproductive isolation

  2. morphological features only

  3. methods of reproduction only

  4. morphology and methods of reproduction

  5. -
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

The biological species concept defines a species as members of population that actually or potentially interbreed in nature, not according to similarity of appearance. The mechanisms of reproductive isolation or hybridisation barriers are a collection of mechanisms, behaviours and physiological processes that prevent the members of two different species that cross or mate from producing offspring or which ensure that any offspring that may be produced are sterile.

Multiple choice

'Ontogeny repeats phylogeny' is a part of which of the following theories?

  1. Recapitulation theory

  2. Darwin's evolution theory

  3. Lamarck's evolution theory

  4. Weisman's theory

  5. -
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

The theory of recapitulation is often expressed in Ernst Haeckel's phrase 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny'. It is a largely discredited biological hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages in the evolution of their remote ancestors.

Multiple choice

Which of the following was the coverstone of theory of Darwin?

  1. Natural selection

  2. Inheritance of acquired characters

  3. Omnis cellula cellula

  4. Higher productivity

  5. -
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
A Correct answer
Explanation

The process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin and it is now regarded as the main process that brings about evolution.