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7.4 Evo-Devo — Test 1
Q1. Evolutionary developmental biology ('evo-devo') studies:✓ How changes in developmental processes drive evolutionary change
Q2. The discovery that Hox genes are conserved from flies to mammals showed that:✓ The genetic toolkit for building bodies is deeply shared across animals
Q3. A homeotic mutation is one in which:✓ One body part is replaced by another (a change of identity)
Q4. Karl Ernst von Baer's laws of development state that:✓ General features of a group appear earlier in development than specialised ones
Q5. Ernst Haeckel's (now largely rejected) idea that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' claimed that:✓ An embryo passes through the adult forms of its ancestors
Q6. The concept of homology refers to structures that:✓ Share a common evolutionary and developmental origin
Q7. The fact that a mouse Pax6 gene can induce eyes in a fly demonstrates:✓ Deep conservation of the genetic program for eye development
Q8. Wilhelm Roux and Hans Driesch's experiments on early embryos founded the field of:✓ Experimental embryology
Q9. Spemann and Mangold's organizer experiment was historically important because it:✓ Demonstrated embryonic induction (one tissue directing another)
Q10. Changes in the timing of developmental events during evolution are called:✓ Heterochrony
Q11. Changes in the spatial location of gene expression during evolution are called:✓ Heterotopy
Q12. The 'genetic toolkit' concept in evo-devo refers to:✓ A conserved set of developmental genes reused across animals
Q13. Much morphological evolution is now thought to result from changes in:✓ Cis-regulatory (gene-control) regions rather than the proteins themselves
Q14. August Weismann's germ-plasm theory proposed that:✓ Hereditary information passes only through the germ line, not from body to germ cells
Q15. The vertebrate forelimb, the bat wing and the whale flipper are examples of:✓ Homologous structures (shared ancestry, different functions)
Q16. Convergent evolution produces structures that are:✓ Analogous (similar function, independent origin)
Q17. Hox gene duplication during vertebrate evolution is significant because it:✓ Allowed greater body-plan complexity and diversification
Q18. The study of how phenotypic plasticity (one genotype giving different forms in different environments) relates to evolution is part of:✓ Evo-devo (eco-evo-devo)
Q19. A key insight of evo-devo is that large evolutionary changes in form can arise from:✓ Small changes in the regulation or timing of conserved developmental genes
Q20. Overall, evo-devo unifies biology by showing that:✓ Development and evolution are deeply connected through shared, modifiable genetic programs