Intro Bio 152 Discussion questions for week of October 9

Instructions: Complete this assignment before your discussion meets. We will not be checking it, but if you
complete it beforehand, you will have more time for general exam review during discussion (these are the
questions we will be tackling during discussion). At the very least, complete #1.

1. Write five review questions that you would like to go over during your discussion section. Don’t just think
about them; write them down on a piece of paper and bring that with you to discussion. You will be sharing
them with your classmates. These questions should be based on lecture material, and should address specific
things you would like to examine. Create questions with the goal of facilitating your exam preparation.
 Some examples of not-so-great questions (if your questions look like these, you should revise them):
o “I want to go over the different types of selection.”
o “Will allopolyploidism be on the exam?”
o “Lamarck vs. Darwin”

2. Below is a simple phylogenetic tree of the animal phyla. Onto this tree, identify and map the key
innovations in development that occurred leading to the appearance of these phyla.

3. Considering hominins vs. other primates, describe three differences that Dr. Lee talked about during
lecture. What are some benefits and costs of these adaptations?

4. Describe three hypotheses for how Neanderthals went extinct.

5. Lay out the concepts of the Multiregional Hypothesis vs. the Out-of-Africa hypothesis with respect to Homo
sapiens. Define and distinguish them. Which one is more likely? What is the evidence for this? Are their
caveats to the currently most accepted hypothesis?

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6. Most of us can’t imagine a world without oxygen. However, as you learned in 151, chemically, oxygen is a
powerful oxidizing compound. What effect(s) would the increase in oxygen levels of the atmosphere have on
the organisms that existed at that time?

7. Without using your textbook or notes, put the following events along a timeline. For this question, we're
not interested in dates, just what came before what. We're asking you to think about a logical progression for
all these events. How do they all fit together in the history of life on this earth?
 Cambrian explosion  Origin of multicellularity
 Colonization of land  Origin of Prokarya
 Endosymbiosis  Proliferation and diversification of Hox genes and
 Evolution of hard body parts clusters in animals
 Origin of life  Oxygen revolution
 Origin of Eukarya  Predator-prey interactions amongst animal

8. Exam practice – A Harvard professor has been searching for a woman to give birth to a Neanderthal child
(given that we now have the full genome sequence of Neanderthals). If this baby were born, would s/he be
the same species as us?
(A) Yes, because there is evidence that intermating did occur in the past between Homo sapiens and
Neanderthals
(B) No, given the relatively large genetic divergence (~800,000 years) between us and Neanderthals
(C) The small amount of introgression of Neanderthal DNA into the Homo sapiens genome suggests that
intermating was occasionally possible, but the small amount of introgression also suggests that
reproductive isolation was common
(D) Yes, because a Homo sapiens woman would have given birth to the child
(E) No, because Neanderthals are extinct and we are still alive

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