This exam consists of 50 multiple-choice questions. Each one has only one right answer. Read each question and all possible answers carefully before answering.

Please mark your answers on the Scantron form provided, using only #2 lead pencil. If you erase an answer, make sure you erase it fully, or the machine may mark it incorrect. Check carefully to ensure that your answers are on the correct rows on the Scantron form.

Turn in both the Scantron form and the test paper when you are finished. Make sure your name is on both. You may write on the test paper if you wish, but anything you write on the test paper will not be graded.

Good luck.

The following eight questions deal with fossil horses. The diagram below is one textbook depiction of how modern horses evolved from smaller ancestors, whose bones have been found as fossils. The modern horse is on top, and successively earlier horses are lower on the page.

1. The trend in the diagram is for horses to develop longer and longer legs over time. How would the French scientist Lamarck have explained this change? Ancient horses somehow stretched out their legs a little as they ran, and that stretching was passed on to their offspring. 2. Most of the fossil horses in the diagram are extinct. Who first showed that extinction had really happened? Georges Cuvier 3. Suppose we know that Merychippus is 15 million years old. If we find Merychippus in one rock layer, and Pliohippus in a second rock layer that lies above the first one, how old is Pliohippus? younger than 15 million years 4. The diagram is actually inaccurate, because evolution is a process of branching, not straight-line descent 5. A more accurate depiction of horse evolution might be given by a type of drawing called a: cladogram 6. At the debate that your beloved prof participated in last week, the creationist debater claimed that evolution can't be demonstrated by experiments. If he's right, then observations and modelling can still be used to test evolutionary hypotheses. 7. Breeders have produced types of horse in the past few centuries that range from small Shetland ponies to racing thoroughbreds to huge Clydesdales. They did this through the process of artificial selection 8. Beginning roughly 30 million years ago, the Earth's climate became colder and drier, and in many parts of the world, grasslands replaced forests. At the same time, horses began evolving with longer legs, which made them able to run much faster. The climate change could have caused the evolutionary change in horses, but why shouldn't you assume this without more evidence? Because correlation isn't the same as causation.

9. Charles Darwin made a five-year voyage around the world on board the ship

HMS Beagle

10. In living things, energy is stored in the form of

chemical bonds

11. My pickup truck shares the following characters with all living things:

they have the ability to break down fuel or food to release energy

12. Which of the following is not part of the reasoning behind natural selection?

Living things are constantly trying to perfect themselves.

13. "Cell phones cause brain cancer, because no one's ever proven that they don't" is

argument from ignorance

14. Horses and donkeys are usually classified as two separate species because:

they can't interbreed and produce fertile offspring

15. Every species is given a formal name in Latin called

a binomial

16. If you miss an exam in this class due to personal illness or injury, what do you have to do to take a make-up exam?

You can't take make-up exams in this class.

Right now, in California, a clinical trial is going on, testing the effectiveness of two drugs (bryostatin-1 and cisplantin) against stomach cancer. Both drugs have already been shown to be effective against cancer, but it is thought that the two drugs taken together might be more effective than either drug taken by itself. (Search on http://clinicaltrials.gov/ for more information. . .) Questions 17-22 deal with this clinical trial.

17. The statement "Bryostatin-1 and cisplantin taken together are more effective at killing tumors than either drug is alone" is

a hypothesis.

18. Patients who are having these drugs tested on them must not be taking other anti-cancer drugs at the same time. This is because

this would introduce another variable into the experiment.

19. Suppose that some of the patients in the trial were given a completely ineffective treatment (say, pills with nothing but chalk dust in them). This is called a

placebo

20. Why would some patients in the trial get this completely ineffective treatment, anyway?

To control for the fact that some people feel better if they get any treatment at all, regardless of whether it works.

21. In the clinical trial, one group of patients will get both drugs, a second group will get only bryostatin-1, and a third group will get only cisplantin. Which of these three groups is/are the control group(s)?

Group 2 and 3

22. For the clinical trial to be considered valid, it must be reproducible. This means that

any scientist with the right equipment should be able to repeat the trial and get the same results.

23. What's wrong with this argument? "If I were a genius, people would persecute me. People persecute me; so I must be a genius!"

It's an argument from affirming the consequent.

24. How about this argument? "If we let people own handguns, then they'll demand machine guns, and then they'll demand nuclear warheads, and then they'll declare war on civilization and everybody will die!"

It's an argument from the slippery slope.

25. You can earn extra points in this class by

Trick question! You can't earn extra points in this class.

26. A group of species may share a lot of features. The simplest explanation, although not the only one, is that these species

are descended from a common ancestor

27. Which of these statements is potentially good science?

N'Sync's music causes hearing loss if you play it too loud for too long.

28. Scientists think that whales are descended from a group of animals that once lived and walked on land. Which of the following facts does not support this idea?

Whales have a streamlined, fishlike shape.

The drawings at the right show four different types of fossils known as trilobites. These trilobites are found in western Utah and various other places in the western United States. 29. Syspacephalus is found in rock layers that lie underneath the rocks where Glossopleura is found. Glossopleura is found in rock layers underneath those where Modocia is found. And Modocia is found in rock layers underneath those that contain Cedaria. This means that Syspacephalus is the oldest. 30. Question #29 above is an example of Steno's "law of superposition" 31. These trilobites are found in the same order all over North America. This is an example of the ___ proposed by ___. principle of succession; William Smith 32. What conclusions can we draw from this diagram about trilobite evolution? We can't draw any conclusions.

33. In the Rift Valley of eastern Africa, there is a series of lakes that are rich in beautiful fish known as cichlids. Each lake has species of cichlids found nowhere else in the world. The best explanation is:

Cichlid populations in separated lakes have evolved into different species.

34. If you miss your usual lab meeting, you may attend a different one, but only if:

you clear it with the lab instructor ahead of time

35. Living things are made up of a large number of large, complex molecules called

macromolecules.

36. Heredity can be defined as

the way organisms pass on characteristics to their offspring.

37. Charles Darwin made many observations that would stimulate him to develop the theory of evolution on some small volcanic islands known as

the Galápagos Islands.

38. If I had ten species, I could draw over two million possible cladograms for those species. Which one would be the best one?

The one that allows species to share the most features in common.

39. The guy I debated briefly mentioned that uniformitarianism was the notion that all change happened slowly, over long periods of time. Was he wrong?

Yes, because uniformitarianism can still accommodate rapid, catastrophic events in Earth history.

40. The grading curve in this class will be

Trick question! There is no curve.

41. Dr. K. C. Larson, in the Department of Biology here at UCA, studies how organisms interact with each other, and how they're affected by their environment. In other words, she studies

ecology

42. A cell-any cell-has a saplike fluid inside, known as

cytoplasm.

43. I made the point in lecture that most of the Waggoners who live, or used to live, in Walkerton, North Carolina are not my direct ancestors. Why did I go into these details about my family history on my father's side?

Because the same is true for species: most fossils are not the direct ancestors of anything living.

In a famous clinical trial in 1999 in Kansas City, Missouri, hospital patients who had just suffered severe heart attacks were divided into two groups. Patients in one group were prayed for by a church "prayer team". Patients in the other group weren't prayed for by the team. The patients didn't know whether they were being prayed for or not. (Check it out at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/04/murphy.htm).

44. Suppose the doctor who led this trial had reported that "patients who were being prayed for just felt sort of better than the ones who weren't." Why might his statement not be testable?

It's too general to be tested.

45. Why was it important that the patients not know whether they were being prayed for?

To avoid the placebo effect.

46. The patients in the first group had a better survival rate than those in the second group. From the point of view of science, what is wrong with this experiment?

There's no way to be sure that the patients in the second group weren't being prayed for by someone else.

47. An oak tree is an autotroph. This means that:

it makes its own food from solar energy and carbon dioxide

48. Charles Lyell's principle of uniformitarianism can be summed up in the following catchphrase:

"the present is the key to the past"

49. Molecules known as carbohydrates are found in all living things, and they're made primarily of the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which of the most common elements in living things aren't found in carbohydrates?

nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur

50. What city is UCA located in?

Conway