AP Biology: Natural Selection Practice Test

The theory of evolution by natural selection means that what is changing over time?

Why are advantageous traits more likely to be passed onto off spring?

Gradualism means Natural Selection would normally happen over many generations and very

According to natural selection, light colored tree trunks would favour

Over the years, white mice became extinct and darker mice survived. This is

A physical trait favored by an environmental change can be called an

Changes in the gene pool over time.

Mutations are a change in what?

Which organisms are most likely to survive?

The trees these moths used to live on were white, but have been covered in soot from coal factories. Which moth will be more successful in this environment?

Why is the mouse population changing over time?

These moths are all the same species. The differences between their wings is an
example of ________________

A scientist is studying two populations of Laysan finches in the Hawaiian islands. The
populations are isolated from each other, but live under similar environmental
conditions.
Over a 20-year period, the scientist gathers allele frequency data for a certain gene,
which has alleles B and b. A subset of the scientist’s results for the two populations is
shown in the following table.

Which of the following statements is best supported by the table?

In a population of frogs, a certain gene has two alleles: a dominant allele (A), and a
recessive allele (a). The genotype frequencies in the frog population for this gene are
shown in the following graph.

Assuming that the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, which of the
following is the frequency of the AAA allele in this population, rounded to two
decimal places?

The following table indicates the presence or absence of selected traits for a set of
animal species.

The data about which trait provides the strongest evidence that all of the animal
species in the table share a common ancestor?

Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) are fish that have small, evenly-spaced scales covering
their entire bodies. Fish farmers bred a population of common carp over many
generations to have only a few patches of large scales on their bodies. Common carp
with this patchy scale phenotype are called mirror carp.

Some of these mirror carp escaped captivity and established a wild population in a local
lake. A scientist predicted that individuals in this wild mirror carp population would, over
time, evolve to have scales covering their entire body due to selective pressures in the
wild.

To study this, the scientist collected phenotypic data on the wild population at four time
points, each ten years apart so as to include multiple generations of carp. The scale
phenotypes were categorized as either partial cover (scales covering less than 10%,
percent of the fish’s body), intermediate cover, or full cover (scales covering greater
than 90%, percent of the fish’s body). These data are shown in the table below.

The following diagrams represent the generation of mature mRNA in a eukaryotic cell
(A) and a prokaryotic cell (B).

Of the structures depicted in the diagrams, which were likely present in the
common ancestor of all eukaryotes, but not in the common ancestor of all
organisms?

The following table shows a set of derived characters for several species of land plants.

Based on the information in the table, which of the following cladograms best
represents the evolutionary relationships among the species?

A group of researchers is studying fish populations in two small, adjacent mountain
lakes. Historically, seasonal flooding temporarily joined the lakes, allowing for repeated
cycles of interbreeding and isolation between the lakes’ fish populations. The area’s
climate has become drier, so the seasonal flooding no longer occurs.
Which of the following best predicts how the lack of seasonal flooding will affect
the fish populations in the lakes over time?