Biology CLEP exam: Population Biology exam with 100% correct answers ( GUARANTEED SUCCESS )

Energy Flow in Ecosystem

Primary Producers>Primary Consumers>Secondary Consumers>Tertiary Consumers

- Primary producers (plants, algae, and some bacteria) use solar energy to produce organic plant material through photosynthesis.

- Second trophic level: Herbivores—animals that feed solely on plants—make up the.

- Third Tropic level: Predators that eat herbivores; if larger predators are present, they represent still higher trophic levels.

- Highest of the trophic levels at which they feed: Organisms that feed at several trophic levels (for example, grizzly bears that eat berries and salmon) are classified at the .

Decomposers, which include bacteria, fungi, molds, worms, and insects, break down wastes and dead organisms and return nutrients to the soil

Productivity in Ecosystem

- the amount of energy flowing through any ecosystem is determined by its net primary productivity, which may change over time

Biogeochemical cycles

The movement of abiotic factors between the living and nonliving components within ecosystems; also known as nutrient cycles (i.e., water cycle, carbon cycle, oxygen cycle, and nitrogen cycle).

Carbon Cycle

the series of processes by which carbon compounds are interconverted in the environment, chiefly involving the incorporation of carbon dioxide into living tissue by photosynthesis and its return to the atmosphere through respiration, the decay of dead organisms, and the burning of fossil fuels.

Nitrogen Cycle

the series of processes by which nitrogen and its compounds are interconverted in the environment and in living organisms, including nitrogen fixation and decomposition.

Oxygen Cycle

cycle whereby natural processes and human activity consume atmospheric oxygen and produce carbon dioxide and the Earth's forests and other flora, through photosynthesis, consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen

Phosphorus Cycle

the cyclic movement of phosphorus in different chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment

Sulfur Cycle

cyclic movement of sulfur in various chemical forms from the environment to organisms and then back to the environment.

Most of the earth's sulfur is stored underground in rocks and mineral and buried deep under ocean sediments. Sulfur can also enter the atmosphere from several natural resources: hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide.

Particles of sulfate salts, such as ammonium sulfate enter the atmosphere from sea spray, dust storms and forest fires. Human effects: burning coal and oil, refining oil, and producing some metal from ores add sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere.

Water Cycle

The continual movement of water among Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and land surface through evaporation, condensation, and precipitation

Rock Cycle

an idealized cycle of processes undergone by rocks in the earth's crust, involving igneous intrusion, uplift, erosion, transportation, deposition as sedimentary rock, metamorphism, remelting, and further igneous intrusion.

Population Growth

Occurs when available resources exceed the number of individuals able to exploit them.

Reproduction is rapid

Death rates are low

Producing a net increase in the population size

Population Regulation

Mechanisms or factors within a population that cause it to decrease when density is high and increase when density is low.

Natality

number of birth/ year to every 1000 people in the population

Mortality

Total number of deaths per year, per 1000 people

Ex: 8.7 / 1000

Competition

A common demand by two or more organisms upon a limited supply of a resource; for example, food, water, light, space, mates, nesting sites. It may be intraspecific or interspecific.

Migration

A movement of people or animals from one region to another.

Density

- Population tend to have maximum density near the center of their geographic range.

- Geo range - the total area occupied by the species

3 ranges: Uniformed, Random, Clumped

K-Selection

occurs in stable environments; favors delayed reproduction with few, large offspring

- selection strategy, with few offspring, long gestation, long parental care, and a long period until sexual maturity.

Community structure

Closed Community: Species within a community have similar geographic range and density peaks. Sharp boundaries known as ecotones

Open Community: Provides some protection as there are no boundaries, but species can come and go as they please

- Terrestrial Biomes: tundra, grassland, desert, taiga, temperate forest, tropical forest.

- Aquatic Biomes: marine, freshwater.

Community succession

- The sequential replacement of species in a community by immigration of new species and by local extinction of old ones

Habitat

An environment that provides the things a specific organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce

Abiotic Factors

Non-living factors including temperature, water, sunlight, wind, rocks and soil

Biotic Factors

the influences of the living parts of the ecosystem e.g. competitors, parasites, pathogens, symbionts, and predators

Niche

How an organism makes its living and interacts with the biotic and abiotic factors in its habitat

that it is a role an animal fills to keep the community healthy

Ex: The flightless dung beetle occupies a niche exploiting animal droppings as a food source

Island biogeography

patterns in the spatial distribution of species among oceanic islands or "islands" of one kind of habitat surrounded by an "ocean" of a different habitat

Influencing Factors on Island biogeography

- Degree of isolation (distance to nearest neighbour, and mainland)

- Length of isolation (time)

- Size of island (larger area usually facilitates greater diversity)

- The habitat suitability which includes: --Climate (tropical versus arctic, humid versus arid, etc.)

Initial plant and animal composition if previously attached to a larger land mass (e.g. marsupials, primates)

--The current species composition

- Location relative to ocean currents (influences nutrient, fish, bird, and seed flow patterns)

Serendipity (the impacts of chance arrivals)

Human activity

Evolutionary Ecology

any evolutionary thinking about ecology, but commonly defined as an analytical approach that presumes that cultures behave as biological organisms do, that natural selection processes act on them, and that they adapt and evolve as organisms do

Life History Strategies

K-selected: constant size, low reproductive rate, extensive postnatal care.

R-selected: rapid growth, J-curve, little postnatal are, reproduce quickly, die quickly.

Altruism

- When an organisms' behavior benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself

- By behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the number that other organisms are likely to produce.

Kin Selection

the idea that evolution has selected altruism toward one's close relatives to enhance the survival of mutually shared genes

History of evolutionary concepts: Lamarck

- Struck by similarities of many animals he studied

- As organisms adapted to their surroundings, nature also drove them inexorably upward from simple forms to increasingly complex ones

- Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations

History of evolutionary concepts: Darwin

- organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits

- Natural selection

Darwin vs. Lamarck

Lamarck: Use and disuse, transmission of acquired characteristics, increasing complexity, No extinction

Darwin: Variation, inheritance, differential survival, extinction

Linneus

The "Father of Modern Taxonomy", set up a taxonomy system-grouping organisms of similar structures. He created Binomial nomenclature.

Natural Selection

A process in which individuals that have certain inherited traits tend to survive and reproduce at higher rates than other individuals because of those traits.

Differential reproduction

proposes that those individuals within a population that are most adapted to the environment are also the most likely individuals to produce viable offspring.

Mutation

A change in DNA that can aid the organism in survival or limit the organism's survival.

Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

The states of a population in which frequencies of alleles and genotypes remain constant from generation to generation, provided that only Mendelian segregation and recombination of alleles are at work

Speciation

A process typically caused by the genetic isolation from a main population resulting in a new genetically distinct species.

Punctuated Equilibrium

A proposed explanation in evolutionary biology stating that species are generally stable over long periods of time. Occasionally there are rapid changes that affect some species which can quickly result in a new species.

Adaptive radiation

An evolutionary pattern in which many species evolve from a single ancestral species

Process in which organisms diversify rapidly into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environment makes new resources available, creates new challenges, or opens new environmental niches

Homology

Similarity in characteristics resulting from a shared ancestry.

Analogy

A comparison that points out similarities between two dissimilar things.

- Similarity due to convergent evolution, not common ancestry

Convergence Evolution

when unrelated species start to resemble one another

Extinction

Disappearance of a species from all parts of its geographical range

Balanced Polymorphism

a situation in which two different versions of a gene are maintained in a population of organisms because individuals carrying both versions are better able to survive than those who have two copies of either version alone.

Genetic Drift

A random change in allele frequency caused by a series of chance occurrences that cause an allele to become more or less common in a population

Ex: Through probability, less are carrying that alleles more and more

Major features of plant and

animal evolution

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Classification of Living Organisms

"King Phillip Came Over For Good Soup"

•Kingdom

•Phylum

•Class

•Order

•Family

•Genus ( Homo in homo sapien; first letter is capitalized, must be single word)

•Species (sapien in homo sapien)

Evolutionary history of humans

http://www2.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookHumEvol.html

Learned Social Behavior

Habituation - decrease in behavior due to no reward

Sensitization - increase in behavior due to stimulus

Societies

Large group of people that share the same social location, political authority, and culture expectations

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/insecsoc.html

Age

composition

Birth Rate

the number of births in a year for every 1,000 people in a population

Fertility Rate

average number of children born to a woman during her lifetime in a population

Theory of Demographic transition

The theory that as a country moves from a subsistence economy to industrialization and increased affluence it undergoes a predictable shift in population growth.

Human intervention in the natural

world

Artificial Selection is the cross breeding done by man against nature to make organisms perform functions

Management of resources

Discussion of energy and biochemical cycles allows for more careful management of resources to maintain viable balance

Environmental pollution

the introduction into the biosphere of materials that because of their quantity, chemical nature, or temperature have a negative impact on the ecosystem or that cannot be readily disposed of by natural recycling processes

Biomedical progress

advances in technology and medicine, humans have altered the carrying capacity of their population

Condoms, contraceptions, birth control

Control of Human

Reproduction

Contraception and Birth control

Genetic Engineering

A technology that includes the process of manipulating or altering the genetic material of a cell resulting in desirable functions or outcomes that would not occur naturally.