PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY II (BI 108)
FINAL EXAM SHEET
Fuller
Chapter 50: An Introduction to Ecology and Biosphere
Chapter 51: Animal Behavior
1. Contrast proximate and ultimate causes of behavior.
2. Define fixed action patterns, imprinting and kinesis.
3. Define learning and give two types.
4. Describe associative learning (2 types again).
5. What is optimal foraging?
6. Describe altruism and inclusive fitness. How might an organism benefit from altruistic behaviors?
Chapter 52: Population Ecology
1. Define a population.
2. Distinguish between density and dispersion
3. Explain how ecologists measure density of a species
4. Describe conditions that may result in clumped dispersion, random dispersion, and uniform dispersion of population.
5. What is demography? What is a life table?
6. Describe the characteristics of a population that exhibit Type I, Type II, and Type III survivorship curves.
7. Describe the life history strategies we discussed in class. Contrast semelparous with iteroparous.
8. What limits brood size?
9. Describe exponential growth.
10. Define and explain how carrying capacity of an environment affects the intrinsic rate of increase of a population. Feel free to use the logistic growth model in your explanation.
11. Be able to use both the exponential and logistic models to calculate change in a population’s growth.
12. Explain how density-dependent factors affect population growth.
13. Describe how weather and climate can function as density-independent factors in controlling population growth.
14. Distinguish between r-selected population and K-selected populations.
15. Which growth model best describes the human population?
16. Be able to recognize the growth of a human population based on its age structure.
Chapter 53: Community Ecology
1. Explain the relationship between species richness, relative abundance, and diversity.
2. Explain how interspecific competition may affect community structure.
3. Describe the competitive exclusion principle, and explain how competitive exclusion may affect community structure.
4. Distinguish between an organism’s fundamental niche and realized niche.
5. Explain how resource partitioning can affect species diversity. What is character displacement?
6. Describe the defense mechanisms evolved by plants to reduce predation by herbivores.
7. Explain how cryptic coloration and aposematic coloration aid an animal in avoiding predators.
8. Distinguish between Batesian mimicry and Mullerian mimicry.
9. Describe how predators use mimicry to obtain prey.
10. Explain the role of predators in community structure. What is a keystone predator? Give an example.
11. Distinguish among parasitism, mutualism, and commensalisms. What is a parasitoid?
12. What is meant by coevolution?
13. What is a food chain/food web?
14. Define disturbance. Succession.
15. Distinguish between primary succession and secondary succession
Chapter 54; Ecosystem
1. Explain the importance of autotrophic organisms with respect to energy flow and nutrient cycling in ecosystems.
2. List and describe the importance of the four consumer levels found in an ecosystem.
3. List the factors that can limit productivity of an ecosystem.
4. Distinguish between energy pyramids and biomass pyramids.
5. Describe the hydrologic (water) cycle.
6. Describe the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle.
7. Explain how phosphorous is recycled locally in most ecosystems.
8. Describe how agricultural practices can interfere with nitrogen cycling.
9. Describe deforestation can affect nutrient cycling within an ecosystem.
10. Describe how the carbon cycle differs in terrestrial and aquatic systems.
11. Describe how increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide could affect the Earth.
12. Describe how human interference might alter the biosphere.
Chapter 55: Conservation Biology