Across
- 3. A Scottish scientist who recognized that the history of the Earth could be determined by understanding how processes such as erosion and sedimentation work in the present day
- 5. A heritable change in the characteristics within a population from one generation to the next; the development of new types of organisms from preexisting types of organisms over time
- 6. A structure in an organism that is reduced in size and function and that may have been complete and functional in the organism's ancestors
- 9. A scientist who discovered organisms are not passively altered by their environment. Instead, a change in the environment causes changes in the needs of organisms living in that environment, which in turn causes changes in their behavior
- 11. In evolutionary theory, a measure of an individual's hereditary contribution to the next generation
- 14. The inability of members of a population to successfully interbreed with members of another population of the same or related species
- 16. The selective breeding of organisms (by humans) for specific desirable characteristics
- 20. A researcher who believed that the growth of a population will always outrun its ability to feed itself, so eventually, there will not be enough food to feed the population
Down
- 1. An anatomical structure in one species that is similar in function and appearance, but not in evolutionary origin, to another anatomical structure is another species
- 2. An evolutionary pattern in which many species evolve from a single ancestral species
- 4. Anatomical structures in one species that, compared compared to other anatomical structures in another species, originated from a single anatomical structure in a common ancestor of two species
- 7. The process by which individuals that are better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce more successfully than less less adapted individuals do; a theory to explain the mechanism of evolution
- 8. The process of becoming adapted to an environment; an anatomical, physiological, or behavioral trait that improves an organism's ability to survive and reproduce
- 10. The random change in allele frequency in a population
- 12. The physical separation of populations due to geographic barriers that prevents interbreeding
- 13. The process by which unrelated species become more similar as they adapt to the same kind on environment
- 15. A defense in which one organism resembles another that is dangerous or poisonous
- 17. The trace or remains of an organism that lived long ago, most commonly preserved in sedimentary rock
- 18. An English naturalist who proposed the theory of natural selection by studying animals on the Galapagos Islands; he discovered the term "survival of the fittest"
- 19. The ability of an organism to change and blend in with its surrounding environment