Primate Evolution
Mock Exam
Course Introduction
Primate Evolution explores the origins and diversification of primates from their earliest ancestors to modern species, examining both fossil evidence and molecular data to illuminate evolutionary trends. The course covers key concepts such as primate anatomy, adaptive radiation, major fossil discoveries, and the environmental and behavioral factors shaping primate development. Students will gain insights into how primates, including humans, evolved, the significance of major evolutionary transitions, and the comparative study of living primates to infer ancestral traits and evolutionary pathways.
Recommended Textbook
How Humans Evolved 7th Edition by Robert Boyd
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Chapter 1: Adaptation by Natural Selection
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Q1) Influential nineteenth-century scientists like Charles Darwin concluded that the complex adaptations we see in plants and animals are problematic and require a special explanation because A) a divine creator designed them.
B) it is very unlikely that they arose by random chance alone. C) they occur in most plants and animals.
D) they have no real function.
Answer: B
Q2) When all females have high fecundity, a population can be driven to extinction. This occurs because of A) natural selection. B) convergence.
C) blending inheritance.
D) continuous variation.
Answer: A
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Chapter 2: Genetics
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Sample Questions
Q1) What genotype do true-breeding plants bearing green seeds have?
A) aa
B) aA
C) Aa
D) AA
Answer: A
Q2) Imagine a cross between AA and Aa individuals. What is the genotypic ratio among the offspring?
A) 1/2 AA and 1/2 aa
B) 1/2 Aa and 1/2 aa
C) 1/2 AA and 1/2 Aa
D) All AA
Answer: C
Q3) As DNA codes for proteins, it can be interrupted by noncoding sequences called A) organelles.
B) proteins.
C) introns.
D) synthetases.
Answer: C
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Chapter 3: The Modern Synthesis
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Sample Questions
Q1) Explain how natural selection can move a population beyond its initial range of variation.
Answer: Several forces of evolution can work to move a population beyond its initial range of variation. The main force that students should discuss is mutation: sometimes mistakes are made when DNA gets copied. These mistakes are often silent because there is redundancy in coding; sometimes these changes are deleterious, and sometimes they are advantageous. In the case of deleterious mutations, selection will act against them and eliminate them from the population. But in the case of advantageous mutations, these alleles will be retained in the population through selection that favors these often incremental changes. Furthermore, characters affected by many genes at many loci may have genotypic changes from mutation that create intermediate phenotypes, and these phenotypes may be favored by stabilizing selection.
The second factor students should discuss is hidden variation (for continuous traits in particular). This kind of variation, although not necessarily directly acted upon by natural selection, is nonetheless subject to segregation and recombination, and as selection favors the expressed trait, the alleles whose variation is hidden are more and more removed from the population, thereby influencing phenotypes less and allowing the expressed phenotype to expand its range.
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Chapter 4: Speciation and Phylogeny
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Sample Questions
Q1) Evolutionary taxonomy uses
A) only morphological similarity to classify organisms.
B) only descent to classify organisms.
C) both similarity and descent to classify organisms.
D) neither similarity nor descent to classify organisms.
Q2) Which of the following does the ecological species concept emphasize?
A) The importance of allopatry between species
B) The importance of gene flow within species
C) The importance of sympatry within species
D) The importance of selection pressures
Q3) Microevolution is
A) the formation of new species.
B) the extinction of a species.
C) evolutionary change within a species.
D) the death of individuals.
Q4) How do genetic distance measures work? How have genetic distance measurements been applied to the primate fossil record to reveal information about the divergence of primate groups?
Q5) Give a hypothetical example of parapatric speciation.
Q6) What is the ecological species concept? Is it applicable to asexual species?
Page 6
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Chapter 5: Primate Diversity and Ecology
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Q1) Most primates rely more on visual stimuli and less on olfactory stimuli than do other mammals. Which of the following is one line of evidence for this?
A) Primates have more complex eyes than do other mammals.
B) Primate olfactory apparatuses are highly specialized, especially in diurnal primates.
C) Primates have more optic nerves than do other mammals.
D) The primate visual sense is highly developed while the olfactory apparatus is reduced, especially in diurnal primates.
Q2) How do active metabolism, growth rate, and reproductive effort affect basal metabolism?
Q3) Explain the taxonomic problems associated with members of Tarsiiformes. How would an evolutionary taxonomist classify these organisms within the order Primate? How would a cladist classify these organisms within the primates?
Q4) The platyrrhine primates
A) are found in Madagascar.
B) have no tails.
C) have a dental formula of 2:1:2:3.
D) are also called the New World monkeys.
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Chapter 6: Primate Mating Systems
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Q1) Males can reduce the cost of dispersal by
A) dispersing with peers or joining all-male groups.
B) dispersing alone but staying close to their original groups.
C) dispersing at night close to other groups.
D) dispersing far from their natal group.
Q2) Primates have longer gestation periods than other mammals relative to body size because
A) they produce smaller offspring relative to body size than other mammals.
B) they have larger brains, relative to body size, than other mammals.
C) they have access to more nutritive resources than other mammals.
D) they do not possess the morphology for external gestation.
Q3) Through genetic testing and behavioral research, researchers have shown that
A) low-ranking males mate guarded more often and sired more offspring.
B) high-ranking males sired more offspring than low-ranking males.
C) low-ranking males were outcompeted during female cycles and did not sire any offspring.
D) high-ranking males mate guarded females but only during cycles when they did not conceive.
Q4) What is the evidence demonstrating the importance of socializing for female primates?
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Chapter 7: The Evolution of Cooperation
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Q1) Reconciliatory contact between opponents immediately following an aggressive encounter can reduce rates of self-scratching, an indicator of stress. If no reconciliation is attempted, then we can assume that
A) rates of self-scratching drop back to baseline, regardless of stress level.
B) rates of self-scratching remain above baseline, indicating high stress levels.
C) only one opponent experiences high stress levels.
D) the opponent will have high rates of aggression between them in the future.
Q2) Parent-offspring conflict occurs
A) because parents and offspring share all of their genes.
B) because individuals are more closely related to self than to siblings.
C) only when siblings are not full siblings.
D) only during weaning.
Q3) When monkeys recognize paternal kin, they may rely on A) gender. B) genotype.
C) age similarity. D) phenotype.
Q4) What is altruism? Why was it a puzzle for evolutionary biology before Hamilton?
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Chapter 8: Primate Life Histories and the Evolution of Intelligence
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Q1) To understand third-party relationships, a primate must
A) have knowledge of the nature of relationships among other individuals.
B) live in a large group.
C) be able to predict food distribution in an environment.
D) understand the reproductive rates of other primates.
Q2) Organisms that reproduce early tend to have
A) large body size and small brains.
B) short gestation times and large litters.
C) high rates of mortality and long life spans.
D) low rates of mortality and short life spans.
Q3) Why does senescence occur?
A) Because of the relative magnitude of the benefits that animals can derive from current reproduction versus from living longer.
B) Because things must eventually wear down, like the transmission on a car.
C) Because everything must grow old and die as a part of the cycle of life.
D) As yet there is no good Darwinian explanation for this.
Q4) How does life history theory explain the trade-offs regarding reproduction and offspring? Illustrate your answer with animal examples.
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Q5) Give two examples indicating that primates deliberately deceive conspecifics.
Chapter 9: From Tree Shrew to Ape
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Q1) Although Pierolapithecus shared some derived morphological characteristics with modern great apes, it lacked
A) flexible wrists.
B) a stiff and short lumbar spine.
C) highly curved fingers.
D) a wide, shallow rib cage.
Q2) The Adapidae were a group of early primates that
A) had smaller eye sockets than the Omomyidae.
B) were nocturnal.
C) were smaller than the Omomyidae.
D) had longer tarsal calcaneus bones than the Omomyidae.
Q3) Potassium-argon dating can only be used to date
A) recent archaeological sites.
B) very young rocks.
C) young fossils.
D) very old fossils or rocks.
Q4) What kind of environment did the earliest primates evolve in?
Q5) Why did the radiation of hominoids come to an end?
Q6) What is the difference between relative and absolute dating?
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Chapter 10: From Hominoid to Hominin
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Q1) Orrorin tugenensis is identified as a very likely hominid on the basis of what evidence?
A) Features of the base of the skull
B) Footprints preserved in volcanic ash
C) Features of the femur
D) Features of the spine and ribs
Q2) Features showing that Australopithecus afarensis is a hominin include
A) a large brain.
B) lack of a tail.
C) bipedalism.
D) thin molar enamel.
Q3) Features of Australopithecus afarensis that are intermediate between those of apes and humans include
A) the shape of the skull.
B) the size of the canines.
C) the size of the brain.
D) both a and
Q4) What was the diet of the robust australopiths? What are the anatomical features associated with their diet?
Q5) What is the anatomical evidence that early australopithecines were bipedal?
Page 12
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Chapter 11: Oldowan Toolmakers and the Origin of Human
Life History
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Q1) Spheroids were most likely
A) used to process plant foods.
B) hammer stones that were worn from making tools.
C) hunting tools thrown at animals.
D) made most often by right-handed toolmakers.
Q2) Taphonomists believe that the Olduvai bone and stone-tool sites were not the result of the death of a large number of animals because
A) mass deaths usually involve members of a single species, but the Olduvai sites contain members of different species.
B) there is usually evidence of dehydration when mass deaths occur, but there is no such evidence at Olduvai sites.
C) mass deaths are very rare among modern animals on the savanna.
D) there is little mixing of bones of different species.
Q3) Microscopic analysis of Oldowan chipped stone tools indicates that they were used for
A) wood working and butchery.
B) sewing and piercing hides.
C) digging in termite mounds.
D) ritual activities.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: From Hominin to Homo
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Q1) The lifeways of Neanderthals probably included
A) burial of the dead and hunting large game.
B) primarily scavenging for meat, and very little use of plant foods.
C) permanent settlements.
D) limited planting of crops.
Q2) Homo ergaster possessed some primitive characteristics of earlier hominids, including
A) a chin.
B) a high forehead.
C) large browridges.
D) postorbital constriction.
Q3) Homo ergaster used
A) Oldowan and Acheulean tools.
B) bone and wood tools but not stone tools.
C) Mousterian tools.
D) the earliest metal tools.
Q4) What is the evidence that led paleoanthropologists to separate African and Asian hominins of the Lower Pleistocene into two separate species, H. ergaster and H. erectus, respectively? Can the same case be made for African and European H. heidelbergensis in contrast to their eastern representatives?
Page 14
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Chapter 13: Homo sapiens and the Evolution of Modern
Human Behavior
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Q1) Evidence in favor of the viewpoint that modern humans evolved in Africa includes the fact that ________ lived side-by-side.
A) in Asia Homo erectus and modern humans
B) in the Middle East Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans
C) in Africa Homo ergaster and modern humans
D) in Australia Homo erectus and modern humans
Q2) The earliest Australians are associated with A) Acheulean tools.
B) sites dated to 75,000 years ago.
C) ceremonial burials and cremations.
D) Homo floresiensis.
Q3) During the human Cultural Revolution, innovations included A) construction of elaborate shelters.
B) living in caves.
C) Mode 3 technology.
D) independent problem solving.
Q4) How does the fossil evidence support the hypothesis that modern humans arose in Africa?
Page 15
Q5) How does the archaeological evidence support the hypothesis that modern humans arose in Africa?
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Chapter 14: Human Genetic Variation
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Q1) Environmental variation includes factors such as
A) differences in height.
B) differences in weight.
C) differences in genes.
D) differences in climate.
Q2) Humans and chimpanzees differ in about ________% of their total nucleotides.
A) 1.0
B) 2.5
C) 3.0
D) 0.75
Q3) You have sampled height from two populations: the Maasai of East Africa and the Inuits of Alaska. You have determined that there is a significant difference in height between these two populations, with Inuits being of shorter height than the Maasai. Is this variation that you observe due solely to genetics? Why or why not?
Q4) Why are there many lethal recessives found at low frequencies in human populations?
Q5) Explain the changes in the structural or protein-coding genes of humans and chimpanzees.
Q6) How are modern humans genetically different from the chimpanzee?
Page 16
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Chapter 15: Evolution and Human Behavior
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Sample Questions
Q1) If you have one deleterious recessive that causes early death in its homozygous state, what is the probability that an offspring by you and your full sibling would acquire the lethal disease?
A) 1:1
B) 1:2
C) 1:4
D) 1:8
Q2) Kipsigis bridewealth is associated with A) polyandry.
B) competition over the most eligible women.
C) marriage decisions made by brides and grooms.
D) periods of food shortage.
Q3) Chastity was
A) an important mate quality in Sweden but not China.
B) an important mate quality in China but not Sweden.
C) important in both China and Sweden.
D) unimportant in both Sweden and China.
Q4) Discuss the evidence supporting incest avoidance in nonhuman primates. Please give examples.
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Chapter 16: Culture Cooperation and Human Uniqueness
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Sample Questions
Q1) Emulation occurs when individuals
A) perform an action by watching the behavior of others.
B) learn the end state of a behavior but not the behavior that generated the end state.
C) have an increased chance of learning a behavior when others have that behavior.
D) learn a behavior by following the first steps then figuring out the rest on their own.
Q2) Cultural group selection differs from natural selection in that
A) differences in cultural adaptations can be established between groups.
B) there is a struggle for existence.
C) there is variation in traits.
D) traits are heritable.
Q3) Most mammals and birds attain appropriate behaviors matched to their environment through A) personal experience alone.
B) information passed on from other individuals alone.
C) information encoded in their genes alone.
D) a combination of innate, genetic behaviors and personal experience.
Q4) In what ways is human cooperation different from that of other mammal species?
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