Florida Biology EOC Practice Test 2025 – Comprehensive All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

The concept that closely related organisms exhibit similar stages of embryonic development is known as comparative embryology. This area of study focuses on the comparison of the embryonic development patterns across different species to highlight evolutionary similarities and differences.

In comparative embryology, researchers observe that early embryonic stages of diverse organisms can display remarkable similarities, which suggest a common ancestry. For example, many vertebrates share similar structures in their embryonic stages, such as pharyngeal pouches, which later develop into different structures in adults. This evidence supports the idea of evolutionary relationships among various species, indicating that they have evolved from a common ancestor.

The other options refer to different biological concepts that do not specifically address embryonic development stages in relation to evolutionary relationships. Comparative anatomy focuses on the structural similarities and differences in adult organisms, molecular biology deals with the biochemical processes and molecular mechanisms within living organisms, and genetic drift refers to the changes in allele frequencies in a population due to random sampling effects, which does not relate to embryonic development stages.