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A team of researchers has developed a poison that has proven effective against lamprey larvae in freshwater cultures. The poison is ingested and causes paralysis by detaching segmental muscles from the skeletal structures. The team wants to test the poison's effectiveness in streams flowing into Lake Michigan, but one critic worries about potential effects on lancelets, which are similar to lampreys in many ways. Why is this concern misplaced?


A) Lamprey larvae and lancelets have very different feeding mechanisms.
B) Lancelets do not have segmental muscles.
C) Lancelets live only in saltwater environments.
D) Lancelets and lamprey larvae eat different kinds of food.

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Which of the following characteristics evolved independently in mammals and birds?


A) amniotic eggs
B) jaws
C) bone
D) endothermy

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Which of these characteristics contributed the most to vertebrate success in relatively dry environments?


A) the shelled, amniotic egg
B) the ability to maintain a constant body temperature
C) two pairs of appendages
D) a four-chambered heart

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With which of the following statements would a biologist be most inclined to agree?


A) Humans and other apes represent divergent lines of evolution from a common ancestor.
B) Humans represent the pinnacle of evolution and have escaped from being affected by natural selection.
C) Humans evolved from chimpanzees.
D) Humans and other apes are the result of disruptive selection in a species of chimpanzee.

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Which of these statements accurately describes a similarity between sharks and ray-finned fishes?


A) They are equally able to exchange gases with the environment while stationary.
B) They are highly maneuverable due to their flexibility.
C) They have a lateral line that is sensitive to vibrations.
D) A swim bladder helps control buoyancy.

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Which of these would a paleontologist most likely do to determine if a fossil represents a reptile or a mammal?


A) Look for the presence of milk-producing glands.
B) Look for the mammalian characteristics of a four-chambered heart and a diaphragm.
C) Use molecular analysis to look for the protein keratin.
D) Examine the teeth.

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Which of the following could be considered the most recent common ancestor of living tetrapods?


A) a sturdy-finned, shallow-water lobe-fin whose appendages had skeletal supports similar to those of terrestrial vertebrates
B) an armored, jawed placoderm with two pairs of appendages
C) an early ray-finned fish that developed bony skeletal supports in its paired fins
D) a salamander that had legs supported by a bony skeleton but moved with the side-to-side bending typical of fishes

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Use the following information to answer the question. Brown et al. and Morwood et al. reported in 2004 that they had found skeletal remains of a previously unknown type of hominin, now dubbed Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores. These hominins were small (approximately 1 meter tall) with small braincases (approximately 380 cubic centimeters) as compared with other hominins. The remains of H. floresiensis were found alongside handmade stone tools and the remains of dwarf elephants that also inhabited the island, suggesting that H. floresiensis was able both to make tools and to coordinate the hunting of animals much larger than itself. H. floresiensis is estimated to have lived at the site where the remains were found from at least 38,000 years ago to 18,000 years ago. It is speculated that H. floresiensis and H. sapiens may have lived on Flores concurrently. Suppose researchers obtained mitochondrial DNA samples from the H. floresiensis remains, amplified a 1,000-base-pair sequence via PCR, and compared it to that of several currently living H. sapiens native to Indonesia, North Africa, and North America. Also suppose H. floresiensis were found to differ from the average Indonesian H. sapiens in 28 base pairs, from the average North African H. sapiens in 51 base pairs, and from the average North American H. sapiens in 53 base pairs, while two randomly selected H. sapiens differed from each other in an average of 21 base pairs. What would you surmise from these data?


A) H. floresiensis and H. sapiens probably did not live on Flores concurrently.
B) H. floresiensis and H. sapiens probably lived on Flores concurrently but did not interact.
C) H. floresiensis and H. sapiens probably lived on Flores concurrently, and H. sapiens killed and consumed H. floresiensis.
D) H. floresiensis and H. sapiens probably lived on Flores concurrently and interbred to some degree.

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Vertebrates and tunicates share


A) jaws adapted for feeding.
B) a high degree of cephalization.
C) an endoskeleton that includes a skull.
D) a notochord and a dorsal, hollow nerve cord.

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Which characteristic is common to all the modern representatives of all major reptilian lineages (turtles, lepidosaurs, crocodilians, and birds) ?


A) presence of teeth
B) presence of four walking limbs
C) ectothermy
D) presence of a notochord

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Unlike eutherians, both monotremes and marsupials ________.


A) lack nipples
B) have some embryonic development outside the uterus
C) lay eggs
D) are found in Australia and Africa

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Use the following information to answer the question. While on an intersession course in tropical ecology, Kris pulls a large, snakelike organism from a burrow (the class was granted a collecting permit) . The 1-meter-long organism has smooth skin, which appears to be segmented. It has two tiny eyes that are hard to see because they seem to be covered by skin. Kris brings it back to the lab at the field station, where it is a source of puzzlement to the class. Kris says that it is a giant oligochaete worm; Shaun suggests it is a legless amphibian; Kelly proposes it belongs to a snake species that is purely fossorial (lives in a burrow) . The class decided to humanely euthanize the organism and subsequently dissect it. Having decided that it was probably not a reptile, two of their original hypotheses regarding its identity remained. Which of the following, if observed, should help them arrive at a conclusive answer?


A) presence of moist, highly vascularized skin
B) presence of lungs
C) presence of a nerve cord
D) presence of a digestive system with two openings

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Ancient fossils that seem to be an intermediate stage in the evolution from fish to tetrapods had which of the following characteristics?


A) fins and scales like a fish but ribs to support the body and a bone structure in the front limb like tetrapods
B) a pelvis and rear limbs like a fish and gills like a tetrapod
C) bones that allowed the head to move like a fish and both gills and lung like a tetrapod
D) scales and a tail like a fish and a simple bone arrangement in the back limb like a tetrapod

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During chordate evolution, what is the sequence (from earliest to most recent) in which the following structures arose?


A) paired fins, jaws, swim bladder, amniotic egg, four-chambered heart
B) jaws, paired fins, swim bladder, four-chambered heart, amniotic egg
C) jaws, paired fins, paired fins, swim bladder, four-chambered heart
D) paired fins, amniotic egg, four-chambered heart, jaws, swim bladder

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Which of the following characteristics is shared by a hagfish and a lamprey?


A) a rasping tongue
B) paired fins
C) jaws
D) a well-developed notochord

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All chordates studied to date, except tunicates, share a set of ________.


A) 13 Hox genes
B) 5 Dlx genes
C) 9 Otx genes
D) 7 FOXP2 genes

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In what respect do hominins differ from all other anthropoids?


A) lack of a tail
B) eyes on the front of the face
C) bipedal posture
D) opposable thumbs

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Which of these traits is most strongly associated with the adoption of bipedalism?


A) enhanced depth perception
B) shortened hind limbs
C) opposable big toe
D) repositioning of foramen magnum

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What group of mammals have (a) embryos that spend more time feeding through the placenta than the mother's nipples, (b) young that feed on milk, and (c) a prolonged period of maternal care after leaving the placenta?


A) Eutheria
B) Marsupiala
C) Monotremata
D) Lagomorpha

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Marsupials survived in Australia (as opposed to Asia) because ________.


A) marsupials were better adapted to the climatic conditions of Australia than were eutherians
B) marsupials were, and are, better competitors than eutherians
C) Australia had separated from Pangea, and eutherians were not able to invade Australia
D) continental drift, caused by plate tectonic processes, allowed eutherians to invade Asia and the Americas

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