Heredity and evolution — Advanced

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Level 3: Advanced

Evaluate, justify, synthesise, propose — combine ideas, judge claims and methods (senior secondary style).

1. A social post claims: If you exercise, your muscles improve, so your children will be born stronger. From a genetics perspective, the best evaluation is:

   A)Mostly correct — training-induced traits routinely alter DNA sequence in sperm and eggsB)Mostly incorrect — muscle gain from training is not inherited as DNA changes in that simple Lamarckian way; heritable variation and selection work differentlyC)Misleading — children inherit mitochondria only from the mother, so fathers cannot influence traitsD)Correct when both parents trained before puberty, because germ cells then “lock in” fitness

2. A news headline says one small study proves a complex trait (e.g. intelligence) is caused by a single gene. The strongest scientific critique is:

   A)Acceptable if the journal’s impact factor is high and the p-value is below 0.05B)Too cautious — environment explains essentially all cognitive variation, so genes are irrelevantC)Complex traits are usually multifactorial; one unreplicated study rarely “proves” causation—need design, sample, replication, confoundersD)Twin studies already isolate single genes with certainty, so headlines can be taken at face value

3. To justify that two species share a common ancestor, a student should prefer:

   A)A single shared trait in one organ system, with no other checksB)Multiple independent lines of evidence (e.g. fossils, anatomy, molecules) that convergeC)Overlapping geographic ranges in the fossil record, without molecular or anatomical comparisonsD)Identical chromosome numbers alone, without sequence or trait data

4. Which proposal best synthesises natural selection and genetic variation?

   A)Environment changes which heritable variants reproduce more; allele frequencies can shift over generationsB)Selection removes all variation each generation, so populations become genetically uniformC)Allele frequencies drift each generation with no environmental influence on survivalD)Natural selection changes an individual’s DNA during its life in the direction the environment “needs”

5. Evaluate the claim: If two species look alike, they must share a recent common ancestor.

   A)Always true for any similar traitB)Not necessarily — convergent evolution can produce similar forms from distant lineagesC)False — morphology never supports phylogenyD)True only for marine species

6. Justify caution when inferring causation from a correlation between a gene variant and a disease:

   A)Correlation always implies direct causation if the sample is largeB)Genetic studies never need controlsC)Linkage, population structure, environment and chance can create associations without simple one-gene causationD)p-values above 0.01 always mean causation is proven

7. A population’s allele frequencies change over generations with no differential survival or reproduction. Which process is most emphasised?

   A)Directional natural selection onlyB)Artificial selectionC)Guaranteed adaptation to a new predatorD)Genetic drift (random sampling effects), especially in small populations

8. Synthesise why genetic bottlenecks can threaten conservation of small populations:

   A)Variation can be lost by chance; inbreeding and drift increase extinction riskB)Bottlenecks always increase diversity quicklyC)They only affect mitochondrial DNA in plantsD)They remove all harmful alleles automatically

9. Critique teaching evolution as “survival of the strongest individual only”:

   A)Accurate — only the largest organism in a species reproducesB)Too narrow — fitness relates to reproduction, not only strength; cooperation, timing and environment matterC)False — natural selection never acts on individualsD)Correct if the word strongest is defined as fastest runner

10. Why might polygenic traits complicate Mendelian pedigree predictions?

    A)They always follow 3:1 in every crossB)They involve only one allele with no environmentC)Many genes (and often environment) contribute; simple dominant/recessive ratios may not appearD)Polygenic traits cannot be inherited

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