Practice Questions for Test 2 2019 PDF

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Practice Questions from Dr. Kolasa...

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Example of questions you may see in Test 2, Nov 2019. Please note that some example situations are different – this is intentional and will be on the test – so you can focus on the concept rather than on the specifics of a case.

1. Which action influences the abiotic components of an organism’s environment? HINT: What is the difference between the biotic and abiotic components of an environment? a. introduction of exotics b. extinction of predators c. water pollution d. interactions with offspring 2. Which aspects of a region’s climate have the most impact on plants and animals? HINT: What are the four components of climate that can affect organisms in a region? a. sunlight and wind b. temperature and moisture c. soil composition and temperature d. moisture and wind 3. Which of the following statements about Hadley cells is true? HINT: Review the movements of air in a Hadley cell. a. As warm air rises, air at the top of the atmosphere is pushed poleward and cools. b. Warm air expands and rises from the surface of the atmosphere around the poles. c. Warm air cools as it begins to sink at about 30° N and 30° S latitude. d. The moisture in cool air condenses into clouds and precipitates because cool air holds more moisture than warm air. 4. You are doing a comparative study of tree species diversity at two different sites. At site 1 you find 202 tree species, while in a same-sized plot at site 2 you find 12 tree species. Which of the following is most likely to be true? HINT: What biome has the highest species diversity overall? a. Site 1 is in tropical rain forest, and site 2 is in temperate deciduous forest. b. Both sites are in tropical rain forest. c. Site 1 is in temperate deciduous forest, and site 2 is in tropical rain forest. d. Both sites are in boreal forest. 5. A carp has a high number of offspring, but predators eat many of them during the first year of life. Once they survive to maturity, they have few predators. If humans have a type I survivorship curve, what type of curve would a carp have and why?

HINT: Survivorship is defined as the proportion of offspring produced that survive, on average, to a particular age. a. Type II, because carp have a steady survivorship throughout their life. b. Type II, because carp have a high survivorship initially that declines at the end of their life. c. Type III, because carp have a low survivorship initially but a high survivorship once they have matured. d. Type III, because carp have a steady survivorship that increases with age.

7. Which factor is one of those used to calculate population growth? HINT: Evolutionary biologists study the changes in populations throughout time. a. marriage statistics b. death rate of a population c. rate of food consumption in a population d. rate of chronic illness in a population

8.

Tsetse fly is a species of considerable importance because: a. It controls distribution of major predators in Canadian Arctic. b. Discourages raising domestic cattle and causes sleeping sickness in Africa. c. Insures pollination and fruiting of date palms and thus provides food for desert populations. d. It is actually a beetle that damages crops in central Asia but whose larvae are a delicacy food in Thailand.

8.

The equation a. b. c. d.

∆𝑵 ∆𝒕

= 𝒓𝒎𝒂𝒙 𝑵(

𝑲−𝑵 ) describes: 𝑵

The exponential growth of a population. The probability of a population going extinct. Interactions between species K and species N. The logistic growth of a population.

9. Primitively eusocial Polistes wasps, are relatives of bees (both belong to the insect order Hymenoptera. In one species, female nest-mates in the genus Polistes has an average coefficient of relatedness (r) of about 0.75. In another speices, Polistes annularis, female

nest-mates were found with r = 0.25. Which of the following might explain this level of relatedness? a. They share the same father but there are multiple queens in the nest. b. They share the same mother but have different fathers. c. They had two different fathers and two different mothers d. None of these make sense 10. How would self-sacrifice of male redback spiders be an adaptive behaviour?

a. Males only use self-sacrificing behavior once they have mated with several females and have exhausted their sperm supplies. b. The chance of a male meeting more than one female is quite low; self-sacrifice maximizes mating time with and sperm transfer to any female the male finds. c. Males are able to mate with one female, then mate with another female nearby, before being devoured by the first female. d. When males meet a female and self-sacrifice, it activates enzymes that make his sperm more fit and able to fertilize more eggs.

ANSWERS: 1C, 2B, 3A, 4A, 5C, 6B, 7B, 8D, 9B, 10B...