Differential success in the reproduction of different phenotypes resulting from the interaction of organisms with their environment
Natural selection
Accumulation of inherited characteristics that enhance an organism's ability to survive and reproduce
Adaptation ie: disruptive camouflage
Breeding for particular characteristics process of domestication; results in new species
artificial selection
Features in different species are similar because of common ancestry: ie; how all arms have the same general bone structure
homology
Adaptations in different species are similar only due to similar selective pressures
analogy (convergent evolution)
What was the reason for the marsupial distribution
It was a result of the continental drift
Serve little if any purpose; what remains of ancestral adaptations lost over generation
vestigial structures
Specimens of now extinct forms of life can reveal evidence about where a modern organism fits into the tree of life; consider transitional whale fossils
transitional fossils
The whale once had hind legs list its original form to what it is today..