bio exam 4 masterings

The symbols +, -, and 0 are used to show the results of interactions between individuals and groups of individuals. The symbol + denotes a positive interaction, - denotes a negative interaction, and 0 denotes interactions in which individuals are not affected. The first symbol refers to the first organism mentioned. What interactions exist between a lion pride and African wild dogs, if the dogs are found to typically avoid areas with lions?

+/-

10,000 kcal of producer could support approximately _____ kcal of tertiary consumer.

10

Approximately _____% of the energy at one trophic level is passed on to the next highest trophic level.

5-10

Which of the following may result from resource partitioning?

A population may have a smaller realized niche when it coexists with a competitor. Competing species may partition time, feeding at different times of day.

The term used to describe a harmless organism resembling a harmful one is _____.

Batesian mimicry

Which processes increase a population's size?

Births and immigration

_____ are secondary consumers.

Carnivores

Which of the following statements about density-independent growth is true?

Density-independent growth is also known as exponential growth.

Which of the following causes Earth's seasons?

Earth's tilt on its axis

Why does a vegetarian leave a smaller ecological footprint than an omnivore?

Eating meat is an inefficient way of acquiring photosynthetic productivity.

Gray wolves, once the top predators in Yellowstone National Park, were hunted to extinction there in 1926. In 1995, 15 wolves were brought to Yellowstone from Alberta. The wolf population has now grown to 300. The forest community in Yellowstone National Park can be described by a top-down model of community organization. Wolves hunt and eat elk. Elk are herbivores that prefer riparian vegetation (plants growing next to streams and lakes). Ravens, bears, and eagles feed on elk carcasses. How would you expect the return of the wolves to Yellowstone to affect the other species there?

Elk populations would decline.

Which of the following is primarily responsible for limiting the number of trophic levels in most ecosystems?

Energy transfer between trophic levels is usually less than 20 percent efficient.

Which factor does not affect a habitat's carrying capacity?

Genetic variation in the population

Which of the following best illustrates ecological succession?

Grass grows on a sand dune, is replaced by shrubs, and then by trees.

Which of the following statements about a population experiencing logistic growth is true?

If N is greater than K, the population will shrink.

Which statement accurately describes Earth on February 21, a date that falls between the December solstice and the March equinox?

Locations in the Southern Hemisphere experience more than 12 hours of daylight.

Why is a diagram of energy flow from trophic level to trophic level shaped like a pyramid?

Most energy at each level is lost, leaving little for the next.

What is a likely outcome of a moderate disturbance, such as a severe thunderstorm?

Patches of different habitats within the landscape

For mountain ranges that are subjected to prevailing winds, why is the climate drier on the leeward (downwind) side?

Pushed by the prevailing winds on the windward side, air is forced to rise, cool, condense, and drop its precipitation, leaving drier air to descend the leeward side.

Based on the climograph, what mainly differentiates temperate grassland from temperate broadleaf forest?

Temperate broadleaf forests receive more precipitation.

Which statement regarding the June solstice is true?

The Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun.

A fish swimming into an estuary from a river would have which of the following as its greatest physiological challenge?

The change in water solute content would challenge the osmotic balance of the fish.

You observe two breeding female fish of the same species. One female lays 100 eggs and the other female lays 1,000 eggs. Which one of the following outcomes is most likely, given the limits of fitness trade-offs?

The female laying 100 eggs lives longer than the female laying 1,000 eggs.

At what time of year is the intensity of solar radiation striking each of Earth's hemispheres weakest?

The intensity of solar radiation is weakest in the Southern Hemisphere in June and in the Northern Hemisphere in December.

Select the correct statement(s) about the transfer of food energy up the trophic levels from its source in autotrophs.

The length of a food chain is limited by the inefficiency of energy transfer along the chain.

As N approaches K for a certain population, which of the following outcomes is predicted by the logistic equation?

The population growth rate will approach zero

What is the primary limiting factor that determines why no female animal can produce a very large number of very large eggs?

There are energy constraints.

Some arctic tundra ecosystems receive as little precipitation as deserts but have much more dense vegetation.

Tundra is much cooler than deserts, so less water evaporates during the growing season and the tundra stays more moist.

Subtropical plants are commonplace in Land's End, England, whose latitude is the equivalent of Labrador in coastal Canada, where the local flora is instead subarctic. Which statement best explains why this apparent anomaly exists between North America and Europe?

Warm ocean currents interact with England, whereas cold ocean currents interact with Labrador.

What would happen to the seasons if Earth were tilted 35 degrees off its orbital plane instead of the usual 23.5 degrees?

Winters and summers would be more severe.

Under which of the following conditions would a population most likely experience exponential growth?

Young populations with few individuals.

Imagine that you are managing a large game ranch. You know from historical accounts that a species of deer used to live there, but they have been extirpated. After doing some research to determine what might be an appropriately sized founding population, you reintroduce them. You then watch the population increase for several generations, and graph the number of individuals (vertical axis) against the number of generations (horizontal axis). With no natural predators impacting the population, the graph will likely appear as _____.

a "J," increasing with each generation Submit

What is a biome?

a major type of ecosystem

Which of the following is an example of Batesian mimicry?

a nonvenomous larva of a moth that moves like a venomous snake

Oyster populations are primarily, if not exclusively, composed of _____.

adults

Which of the following is an example of a population?

all of the redwood trees that live in a forest

If you are interested in observing a relatively simple community structure in a clear water lake, you would do well to choose diving into _____.

an oligotrophic lake

Of the choices below, which best describes the effect predation has on the predator/prey organisms involved in the relationship?

benefit ... harmed

Of the following, which is the most inclusive level of organization in nature?

biosphere

The number of individuals that a particular habitat can support with no degradation of that habitat is called _____.

carrying capacity

In wild populations, individuals most often show a _____ pattern of dispersion.

clumped

An egret eats insects stirred up by grazing animals. Which of these terms applies to the relationship between the egret and the grazing animal?

commensalism

Humans and sharks both eat fish. Which of these terms applies to the relationship between the human and the shark?

competition

Which of the following causes populations to shift most quickly from an exponential to a logistic population growth?

competition for resources

Uniform spacing patterns in plants such as the creosote bush are most often associated with _____.

competitive interaction between individuals of the same population

Which of these is the largest terrestrial biome on Earth?

coniferous forest

The producers in aquatic ecosystems include organisms in which of the following groups?

cyanobacteria, algae, plants, photoautotrophs

If the sun were to suddenly stop providing energy to Earth, most ecosystems would eventually vanish. Which of the following ecosystems would likely survive the longest after this hypothetical disaster?

deep benthic ocean

An ecologist recorded 12 white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, per square kilometer (km2) in one woodlot and 20 km2 in another woodlot. What was the ecologist comparing?

density

Which of the following biomes spans the largest annual mean temperature range, but the narrowest mean precipitation range?

desert

Which of these biomes is characterized by little rainfall?

desert

An earthworm that feeds on the remains of plants and animals is acting as a _____.

detritivore

According to the principle of competitive exclusion, two species cannot continue to occupy the same _____.

ecological niche

Which of these organisms has a survivorship curve similar to that of humans?

elephants

Which of the following is regarded as a density-independent factor in the growth of natural populations?

flooding

On a global scale, energy _____ ecosystems whereas chemical elements _____ ecosystems.

flows through ... are recycled in

Which of these organisms has a survivorship curve similar to that of oysters?

grasses

During exponential growth, a population always ________.

grows at its maximum per capita rate

Which of the following terms encompasses all of the others?

heterotrophs...encompasses: carnivores, primary consumers, and herbivores

When climbing a mountain, we can observe transitions in biological communities that are analogous to the changes _____.

in biomes at different latitudes

Which of the following investigations is an example of the study of an abiotic factor?

investigating how the amount of annual precipitation affects the distribution of a tree species

An organism's "trophic level" refers to _____.

its food source

If an ecologist were studying the regional interactions among multiple populations of different species and how they influence the exchange of materials between their various environments, then this would be an example of which kind of research?

landscape ecology

In deep water, which of the following abiotic factors would most limit primary productivity?

light availability

Which of the following conditions favors "big-bang" reproduction?

low rates of offspring survival

Cellulose-digesting microorganisms live in the guts of termites and ruminant mammals. The microorganisms have a home and food, and their hosts gain more nutrition from their meals. This relationship is an example of _____.

mutualism

Humans who have pets tend to be healthier than humans who do not have pets. Which of these terms applies to the relationship between a human and a pet?

mutualism

Resource competition, territoriality, disease, and toxic wastes are some of the factors that provide _____ and help regulate population.

negative feedback

Which of these terms applies to the relationship between a dog and a blood-sucking tick?

parasitism

In the models that describe population growth, r stands for _____

per capita population growth rate

Which of the following organisms is correctly paired with its trophic level?

phytoplankton: primary producer

A human eats a deer. Which of these terms applies to the relationship between the human and the deer?

predation

A cow eating grass is an example of a _____.

primary consumer

In an ecosystem, phytoplankton are _____.

producers

To recycle nutrients, an ecosystem must have, at a minimum, _____.

producers and decomposers

Which of the following groups would be most likely to exhibit uniform dispersion?

red squirrels, who actively defend territories

Which of these species typically has a mortality rate that remains fairly constant over an individual's life span?

robins

Which of the biomes—tundra, coniferous forest, temperate broadleaf forest, temperate grassland, savanna, chaparral, desert, tropical rainforest—require periodic fires to maintain their existence?

savanna, chaparral, temperate grassland, and coniferous forest

Consider this segment of a food web: Snails and grasshoppers eat pepper plants; spiders eat grasshoppers; shrews eat snails and spiders; owls eat shrews. The shrew occupies the trophic level(s) of _____.

secondary and tertiary consumers

When a human eats a steak, the human is acting as a _____.

secondary consumer

The main reason polar regions are cooler than the equator is that ________.

solar radiation strikes the poles at a lower angle and travels through more atmosphere

In mountainous areas of western North America, north-facing slopes would be expected to _____.

support biological communities similar to those found at higher elevations on similar south-facing slopes

Resource partitioning would be most likely to occur between _____.

sympatric populations of species with similar ecological niches

What are the two major factors determining the distribution of terrestrial biomes?

temperature and rainfall

A human who just ate a hamburger is eaten by a shark while swimming. The shark is acting as a _____.

tertiary consumer

Which trophic level is most vulnerable to extinction?

tertiary consumer level

In the region of the Rocky Mountains, imagine that one local variety of Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) predominantly occurs between 5,000-8,500 feet in elevation, where it can best tolerate temperatures and precipitation. If future climate change in this region causes the temperature to increase and rainfall to decrease, then which of the following changes might an ecologist predict about the variety's range?

that variety will occur at higher elevations and/or higher latitudes

Imagine some cosmic catastrophe jolts Earth so that its axis is perpendicular to the orbital plane between Earth and the sun. The most obvious effect of this change would be ________.

the elimination of seasonal variation

Which of these is characteristic of the photic zone of a freshwater biome?

the presence of algae

Which of the following has the greatest effect on the rate of chemical cycling within an ecosystem?

the rate of decomposition in the ecosystem

To determine the density of a rabbit population, you would need to know the number of rabbits and _____.

the size of the area in which they live

The energy for nearly every organism in nearly every ecosystem ultimately comes from _____.

the sun

Which biome is characterized by an extensive canopy that allows little light to penetrate to the ground and by the presence of epiphytes?

tropical rain forest

True or false? Factors that determine the per capita rate of increase of a population include the age of breeding and the number of offspring produced each year.

true

Which biome is characterized by the presence of permafrost?

tundra

Which of the following is an example of Müllerian mimicry?

two species of unpalatable butterfly that have the same color pattern

Which of the following is an important feature of most terrestrial biomes?

vegetation demonstrating vertical layering

In most cases, the two major climatic factors affecting the distribution of organisms in terrestrial ecosystems are _____.

water and temperature

Coral reefs occur on the southeast coast of the United States but not at similar latitudes on the southwest coast. Differences in which of the following most likely account for this?

water temperatures driven by ocean currents

Which aquatic biome listed here is one of the most productive on Earth, and why?

wetlands, nutrient rich high-moisture soils

Keystone species are those species _____.

whose absence would cause major disruption in a community

What are the most abundant animals found in the pelagic zone?

zooplankton

Which equation represents the logistic growth rate of a population?

ΔN/Δt=rmaxN((K−N)/K)