| A | B |
|---|
| Fossil Record | Record of all the fossils ever discovered on Earth. |
| Biological Evolution | The change over time in populations of related organisms. |
| Naturalist | A person who studies plants and animals by observing them. |
| Natural Selection | The process by which organisms with variations that help them survive in their environment live longer, compete better, and reproduce more than those that do not have the variations. |
| Variation | A slight difference in an inherited trait among individual members of a species. |
| Camouflage | An adaptation that enables a species to blend in with its environment. |
| Mimicry | An adaptation in which one species looks like another species. |
| Adaptation | An inherited trait that increases an organism's chance of surviving and reproducing in a particular environment. |
| Environmental Pressures | conditions imposed on a species that cause them to struggle to survive like competition for food, invasive species, parasites, even vegetation change |
| Structural Adaptation | a physical feature of an organism's body having a specific function that contributes to the survival of the organism |
| Behavioral Adaptation | an inherited behavior that helps an organism survive |
| Functional Adaptation | An adaptation that involves internal body systems that affect biochemistry |
| Mechanisms of Evolution | Overproduction of organisms with many variations. Environmental pressures cause certain organisms to survive natural selection. If these variations are passed on they become adaptations. |
| Extinction | A term that typically describes a species that no longer has any known living individuals. |
| DNA | study of this can link organisms together figuring out their common ancestors |
| Evolutionary Tree | a diagram that reflects evolutionary relationships among groups of organisms |
