Quick Quiz
It looks like your students have some questions about Macroevolution. Reflect on what you have just learned and see how well you can respond. Just click on their raised hands!
You could respond:
“No. Macroevolution is the evolution of larger groups than
species, like the evolution of mammals or of flowering plants.”
You could respond:
“3.8 billion years of time can bring about a lot of change.
A whale and a rose are still made of cells that are basically very similar and that similarity reflects their common
ancestry.”
You could respond:
“Insects may well have evolved from animals that looked like
centipedes through loss of segments and legs. Also, some of the segments fused to look like fewer segments. The thorax,
which looks like one part, is actually made of three segments.”
You could respond:
“No. I accept evolution based on the evidence.”
You could respond:
“Do you mean stasis? The words are very similar. Stasis refers
to lineages that have not changed much over a long period of time. Remember when we talked about the coelacanth being a
‘living fossil?’ That is because its morphology has not changed very much in more than 80 million years!”
You could respond:
“I’m not sure, but how will ignorance help you in the future?”
You could respond:
“Practically everything. Over 99% of the species that have lived on Earth are now extinct.”
You could respond:
“Both are the result of the same four mechanisms of evolution: mutation, migration, genetic drift, and natural selection.”
