Exam review (Just Ecology)

ecology

is the study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment

A scientist is studying areas along an elevation gradient. She compares the type and abundance of organisms that colonize them prescribed burns (purposefully set, low-intensity fires) in the different areas along the change in elevation. What scale best describes her study

community ecology

temperature is perhaps the most important factor in the distribution of organisms because

most organisms are unable to regulate their body temperature precisley

the sea heats and cools

more slowly than the land

the global patterns of atmospheric circulation an precipitation occur because of

rising masses of warm air and sinking masses of cool air

the same biome cannot occur on more than one continent

False, the same biome can occur on multiple continents due to similar climatic conditions.

Temperature tends to decline with longitude

False, temperature tends to decline with latitude.

lakes with elevated dissolved nutrients and low water clarity are called

Eutrophic

which of the following is a characteristic of tundra

permafrost

There are two different aquatic biomes that have a lot of current. In both of them, animal life must be very strong swimmers, have places to hide from the current, or primarily be good at holding on to surfaces in the habitat. Which of the following biomes would have animals that exhibit one of these behavioral strategies

Intertidal zone and lotic habitats

Male wild turkeys frequently form a coalition consisting of two brothers and a number of females. The subordinate brother helps to attract females to the coalition, but typically the dominant brother is the only male within the coalition that gets to mate. Solo males that are not in a coalition do occasionally attract females and mate with them. Dominant males in a coalition produce an average of 7 offspring, subordinate males within a coalition produce an average of 0 offspring, and solo males produce an average of 1 offspring. Can kin selection explain this behavior? What is the net benefit (rB - C) of a subordinate male forming a coalition with a brother as compared to being a solo male?

yes, kin selection can explain this behavior because rB>C. The net benefit is 2.

Which of the following conditions would indicate a polygynous mating system

Males are larger than females, resources are limited, Females congregate together, such as in a herd, and males congregate to perform mating rituals.

which of these are advantages of living in groups

many-eyes hypothesis, capture of larger prey, sharing communications about where to find food

inclusive fitness means an organisms

Genetic fitness including genes passed on through relatives and offspring both

____________ is the observable response of the organisms to external or internal stimuli

behavior

behaviors that appear to be genetically programmed are called

innate

Lions in east African safari parks learn to ignore the presence of safari vehicles. This form of learning is

Habituation

What is the process through which animals develop irreversible species-specific behavior patterns

Imprinting

In what type of mating system is marked sexual dimorphism unlikely?

Monogamy

Polyandry is the most common mating strategy

False

Dispersion is

The spatial distribution of individuals

Many species of birds from large flocks. What dispersion pattern describes this behavoir

Clumped

Why is a random dispersal pattern quite rare in nature

Because resources in nature are rarely randomly spaced.

Organisms that produce all of their offspring in a single event are

semelparous

Organisms that reproduce repeatedly are said to be

iteroparous

A survivorship curve with uniform death rates over time is most likely to be a type ______ curve

II survivorship

A survivorship curve in which most individuals die late in life is a type ________ curve.

I survivorship

_______ selected species have a low rate of per capita growth.

K-selected

Parasitism usually affects population in a manner

density-dependant

A plot of population size vs time that displays a J-shape is indicative of

exponential growth

The per capita growth rate of a population is best defined as

per capita birth rate minus per capita death rate

Just because some plants have lots and lots of seeds does not mean that they will make lots and lots of adult plants. Most seeds either are eaten or become seedlings and die before becoming large, adult plants.  This describes what type of survivorship curve?

Type III survivorship curve

Consider a population with 100 individuals and an r of 1.0. If the population is exactly at carrying capacity, what will the population size be one generation later?

100

A metapopulation consists mostly of

Lots of small populations close enough to each other for organisms to move between them.

What is an example of a +/-

Predation

what situation below is best characterized as interference competition?

A tiger that excludes other tigers from its territory

Competition among individuals of different species is called

Interspecific competiton

in competition between P.caudatum and P. Bursaria, neither species goes extinct because they utilize different resources. This can be considered as evidence for

resource partitioning.

What concepts enable two or more species with similar niches to coexits in a community

character displacement and resource partitioning

Several snake species that are harmless have very similar color patterns to the venomous coral snake. This is best described as an example of what?

Batesian mimicry.

What might be the predominant lifestyle of Earth

Parasitism

A mutualism in which each species can live without the other is termed

facultative mutualism.

Top-down factors that can control the population size of plants or animals include which of the following factors?

The density of herbivores, healthy populations of secondary carnivores

which of the following exert bottom-up control

levels of calcium and nitrogen in the soil

Two species that occupy identical realized niches will not be able to co-exist for an extended period of time

true

The eastern indigo snake often makes its home in abandoned gopher tortoise burrows. How would you characterize this relationship and its effect on each member?

Commensalism: Positive for snake, neutral for tortoise

For a disease to spread, it must have

R0 > 1

Community ecology is best defined as the study of

How groups of species interact in the same place at the same time

What is the general global pattern of species richness?

Increasing from polar areas toward the tropics

The species richness of insects on tress can be predicted by which of the follow?

The species-time and the species-area hypothesis

Based on what you know about various species richness hypothesis, a large, tropical area would likely have _____ species richness

high

What is an area of the earth’s surface currently undergoing primary succession?

Volcanoes in iceland

The species-time hypothesis suggest communities diversify with age

True

You decide to volunteer at a community garden and are assigned to tend six equally sized vegetable beds. Three of the beds contain only tomato plants, while the other three contain tomatoes as well as snow peas, bell peppers, cucumbers, okra, and broccoli. You work hard all summer and fall, tending the plants through insect attacks, diseases, and severe summer storms. You harvest vegetables every three days and start to notice a pattern. The mixed vegetable plots consistently produce 4 kilograms each at every harvest, while the tomato-only plots produce between 1-6 kilograms each at every harvest. The garden director notices the pattern as well, and knowing you are a biology student, she asks you for an explanation. What concept or hypothesis do you cite in your response?

The diversity-stability hypothesis

Which of these is a heterotroph

A fish

In food webs, chain lengths

Tend to be short

What is gross primary production

The carbon fixed during photosynthesis

What naturally occurring process is responsible for keeping the earth warm enough to sustain life?

Greenhouse effect

Which of the following are greenhouse gases

water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide

The movement of chemicals through ecosystems is known as

Biogeochemical cycling.

What percentage of earth’s atmosphere consists of nitrogen (N2) gas?

78%

The process by which soil bacteria convert NH3 or NH4 to nitrate (NO3-) is called

nitrification.

What biogeochemical cycles have been heavily affected by human activities? Check all that apply.

The water cycle, the phosphorus cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle

Most of the earths phosphorus is trapped in sedimentary rocks

True

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is stable over a period of one year

False

Biomagnification causes a higher concentration of certain chemicals in lower trophic levels than in higher trophic levels.

False

Sea levels are rising as the Earth’s temperature increases, mainly because

Glaciers are melting

Introduced species become invasive when they

Expand their range and outcompete native species

Ocean fertilization is adding fertilizer-containing limiting nutrients (like nitrogen and phosphorus) to the ocean to create pollution-free “dead zones” which have no CO2

False

Pick all of these actions that would have a substantial impact of eutrophication

-Reducing the use of agricultural fertilizers

- fixing or improving septic and sewage systems

pollutants that undergo biomagnification (check all that apply)

-are more common in living organisms than in the environment

- barley affect herbivores

-include several types of pesticides

-and are very hard to break down into simpler safer molecules.

Select the two most widespread types of habitat destruction

-Deforestation

-conversion to agriculture