1. What is a population?  A gene?  An allele? A gene pool? Genotype?  Phenotype?
Homozygous? Heterozygous?  Recessive vs. Dominant alleles?

2.    What do we mean by microevolution?  What 5 conditions have to be true for a population to be in genetic equilibrium (i.e. not evolving) according to the Hardy-Weinberg Theorem?  For each  condition, explain why this is the case.  Which of these agents will adapt a population to its environment?  Be familiar with the Hardy-Weinberg Equations.  What do each of the terms (p, q, p², q² and 2pq) represent in terms of populations?

3. What is genetic drift?  To which of the conditions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is it related?
Are all populations susceptible to some genetic drift?  What is true of populations that are most
influenced by genetic drift?  What is the bottleneck effect?  How is it related to genetic drift?  What
does it have to do with extinction of organisms?  How is genetic drift related to the founder effect? Why is genetic variation important to the long term success of populations of organisms.

4.  What is a mutation?  What are some of the characteristics of mutations?  How is variation in
organisms generated?  What is the source of new alleles in a population?

5. What is the source of the majority of the phenotypic variation from one generation to the next in most organisms?  How is variation preserved in populations. Why doesn’t natural selection extinguish a population’s variability by culling unfavorable genotypes (you should be able to give several reasons)?

6.   Describe the three modes of selection (stabilizing, directional, diversifying) acting on populations.

7.  What is sexual selection?   Be familiar with some examples of sexual selection.  How are evolutionary outcomes a compromise between sexual selection and natural selection?

8. Does natural selection fashion perfect organisms?  Explain.