As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

General Biology: Definitions and explanations page 9 PDF | Download eBooks

Learn general biology terms with definitions and explanations, biology terminologies (Page 9) for biology degree programs.


  1. What is Paleontology?
    Paleontology, sometimes spelled paleontology is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes ...
  2. What are Adaptations?
    An adaptation is a characteristic of an organism that improves its chances of surviving and/or reproducing. ...
  3. What is Natural selection?
    Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. it ...
  4. What is Artificial selection?
    Artificial selection is also termed as selective breeding. the breeding of plants and animals is done ...
  5. What is Homology?
    Homology is the existence of shared ancestry between a pair of structures, or genes, in different ...
  6. What are Homologous structures?
    A homologous structure is an example of an organ or bone that appears in different animals, ...
  7. What is Vestigial structures?
    A "vestigial structure" or "vestigial organ" is an anatomical feature or behavior that no longer seems ...
  8. What is Evolutionary tree?
    An evolutionary tree is also called a phylogenetic tree. it is a diagram that represents evolutionary ...
  9. What are Convergent evolution?
    Convergent evolution is the process whereby organisms not closely related (not monophyletic), independently evolve similar traits ...
  10. What is Analogous features?
    He term analogous structures pertain to the various structures in different species having the same function ...
  11. What is Biogeography?
    Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through ...
  12. What is Pangea?
    Pangaea or pangea was a supercontinent that existed during the late paleozoic and early mesozoic eras. ...
  13. What is Genetic variation?
    Genetic variation describes the difference in dna among individuals. there are multiple sources of genetic variation, ...
  14. What is Microevolution?
    Microevolution is the change in allele frequencies that occurs over time within a population. this change ...
  15. What is Neutral evolution?
    The neutral theory of molecular evolution holds that most evolutionary changes at the molecular level, and ...
  16. What is Population?
    Population is the number of living this that inhabit an area. the individuals belonging to a ...
  17. What is Gene pool?
    A gene pool is the collection of different genes within an interbreeding population. the term gene ...
  18. What is Hardy Weinberg equilibrium?
    It states that the allele and genotype frequencies in a population will remain constant from generation ...
  19. What is Adaptive evolution?
    Evolution in general is a change in the heritable characteristics present in a population. several factors ...
  20. What is Genetic drift?
    Genetic drift is the change in the frequency of an existing gene variant in a population ...
  21. What is Founder effect?
    The founder effect basically describes the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population ...
  22. What is Bottleneck effect?
    A population bottleneck or genetic bottleneck is a sharp reduction in the size of a population ...
  23. What is Gene flow?
    The gene flow is also known as gene migration or allele flow. it is the transfer ...
  24. What is Relative fitness?
    The fitness of an organism is the quantitative representation of natural and sexual selection within evolutionary ...
  25. What is Directional selection?
    Directional selection is common when a population's environment changes or when members of a population migrate ...
  26. What is Disruptive selection?
    A good example of disruptive selection is a population of black-bellied seed cracker finches in cameroon ...
  27. What is Stabilizing selection?
    An example of stabilizing selection is the birth weight of human babies which is usually in ...
  28. What is Sexual selection?
    Sexual selection is a mode of natural selection where members of one biological sex choose mates ...
  29. What is Sexual dimorphism?
    Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the two sexes of the same species exhibit different characteristics ...
  30. What is Intrasexual selection?
    A good example of intrasexual selection is when a single male may patrol a group of ...
  31. What is Intersexual selection?
    Intersexual selection is when one biological member chooses the other based on certain appearance or fitness ...
  32. What is Balancing selection?
    Balancing selection refers to a number of selective processes by which multiple alleles are actively maintained ...
  33. What is Heterozygote advantage?
    A heterozygote advantage describes the case in which the heterozygous genotype has a higher relative fitness ...
  34. What is Frequency dependent selection?
    Frequency-dependent selection is an evolutionary process by which the fitness of a phenotype depends on its ...
  35. What is Speciation?
    Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. speciation may also ...
  36. What is Prezygotic barrier?
    Prezygotic barriers typically act in one of three ways. firstly, by impeding members of different species ...
  37. What are Postzygotic barriers?
    Postzygotic reproductive barriers occur after the zygote has formed which mean they either reduce the viability ...
  38. What is Morphological species concept?
    Morphological species concept actually characterizes a species by body shape and other structural features and is ...
  39. What is Ecological species concept?
    The ecological species concept is a concept of species in which a species is a set ...
  40. What is Phylogenetic species concept?
    This concept of a species describes species as an irreducible group whose members are descended from ...
  41. What is Allopatric speciation?
    An example of allopatric speciation is the water level in a lake that subsides, resulting in ...
  42. What is Polyploidy speciation?
    By definition, polyploidy just means that a cell or organism contains more than 2 pairs of ...
  43. What is Autoploidy?
    An autopolyploid nucleus is a type of polyploid nucleus which, is formed when the single cell ...
  44. What is Alloploidy?
    The allopolyploid nucleus also has multiple copies of the genome. this happens when more than the ...
  45. What is Hybrid zone?
    Hybrid zones are areas where the hybrid offspring of two divergent taxa are prevalent and there ...
  46. What is Protocells?
    A protocell is a self-organized, endogenously ordered and spherical collection of lipids which has been proposed ...
  47. What are Hydrothermal vents?
    A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seafloor from which geothermally heated water issues. hydrothermal ...
  48. What are Alkaline vents?
    In the absence of oxygen, alkaline vents are proposed to have acted as electrochemical flow reactors, ...
  49. What is Radiometric dating?
    Radiometric dating or radioisotope dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks or ...
  50. What is Half life?
    Half-life is the time required for a quantity to reduce to half its initial value. the ...
  51. What are Stromatolites?
    Stromatolites or stromatoliths are layered mounds, columns, and sheet-like sedimentary rocks that were originally formed by ...
  52. What are Plate tectonics?
    Plate tectonics is the theory that earth's outer shell is divided into several plates that glide ...
  53. What is Mass extinction?
    Mass extinction is a widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on earth. such an event ...
  54. What is Adaptive radiation?
    In evolutionary biology, adaptive radiation is a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral ...
  55. What is Heterochrony?
    In evolutionary developmental biology, heterochrony is a developmental change in the timing or rate of events, ...
  56. What are Homeotic genes?
    Homeotic genes are genes which regulate the development of anatomical structures in various organisms such as ...
  57. What is Phylogeny?
    A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the evolutionary relationships ...
  58. What is Taxonomy?
    Taxonomy is the science of defining and naming groups of biological organisms on the basis of ...
  59. What is Binomial?
    Binomial nomenclature, also called binominal nomenclature or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species ...
  60. What is Analogy?
    In biology, similarity of function and superficial resemblance of structures that have different origins are called ...