Need an Explanation?
Here you'll find a list of all the key terms on the site with a brief definition. For more information, click on any of the terms to be directed to its Wikipedia article.
Here you'll find a list of all the key terms on the site with a brief definition. For more information, click on any of the terms to be directed to its Wikipedia article.
Adaptive Value: the culmination of traits which influence the overall fitness of an animal
Batesian mimicry: a form of mimicry in which a harmless species resembles one which may be dangerous to a shared predator
Cephalopod: a class of molluscs, including squid, cuttlefish, and octopi, that are characterized in part by their large head and tentacles
Crypsis: referring to any number of methods an animal uses to avoid detection
Epipelagic: Epipelagic refers to the zone in the ocean where sunlight fully penetrates and plants are able to perform fitness
Fitness: most often described as an individual's ability to pass on its genes to the next generation of the species
Homologous: referring to pairs of chromosomes which code for the same trait (though not necessarily carrying identical information)
Locus: a particular location on a gene
Mullerian mimicry: unrelated harmful species, which share a common ancestor, closely resemble each other in their warning signals
Ontogeny: the study of the developmental history of an organism based on external factors (both living and non-living) in its environment
Phylogeny: an evolutionary history of a species, looking at its relatedness to others
Plasticity: an organism with a given genotype's ability to change in response to variations in its environment
Polymorphism: when a gene results in more than one version of a certain characteristic
"Supergene": a group of closely related genes on a chromosome which are inherited together