BIO 3303 Final Exam Questions And Answers Well Defined.

Biomes - correct answers Biotic units classified by main plant types What is the difference between a woodland and a forest? - correct answers A forest has a closed canopy What drives terrestrial biomes? - correct answers Annual temperature and precipitation as well as topography, soil, and disturbances How does solar radiation influx with latitude? - correct answers Temperature decreased from equator going to the poles which gives rise to greater seasonal variation How does leaf form classify biomes? - correct answers The longevity of the leaves Deciduous - correct answers Leaf lives for 1 year or 1 growing season where the leaves are lost in the winter or in drought Evergreen - correct answers Leaves live beyond one year and can be further classified into broad-leaf where there is no distinct growing season or needle-leaf where the growing season is short Climate Diagrams - correct answers Describe local climate by comparing climates of biomes based on location, temperature, precipitation Tropical rain forests at the equator - correct answers Dominated by broad-leaf evergreens, warm throughout the year, daily precipitation with low seasonal variation Dry Tropical rain forests - correct answers Rain forests with greater seasonal variation, low precipitation, drought deciduous plants, and a green wet season Savanna - correct answers Semi arid, seasonal rainfall, range of vegetation, ground cover of grasses, scattered trees and shrubs, overall less precipitation than forests and some variation in temperature Grasslands - correct answers Temperate, vary in climate, precipitation is the limiting factor for trees, exist by fire intervention by humans, mid latitudes Tall grass prairie - correct answers Dominated by tall (1m) grass Mixed grass prairie - correct answers Dominated by needle grass Short grass prairie - correct answers Dense and sod forming and are replaced by desert grassland (3 awn grass) Annual grassland - correct answers Rainy winters and hot/dry summers with a mediterrainian climate, limited in geographic size Deserts - correct answers Diverse, dry, low precipitation Where are temperature deserts located? - correct answers Rain shadows Where are cool deserts located? - correct answers Cooler latitudes and high elevations and include desert scrub (sage brush and shade scale) Drought evasion - correct answers Organisms that are inactive and do not reproduce during the dry season; plants stay alive by persisting as seeds; animals may go into estivation How does the spadefoot toad exemplify drought evasion? - correct answers It remains underground except to reproduce in rainy seasons Temperate Shrublands - correct answers Mediterranean climate with dominant evergreen shrub growth, woody and persistent stems without a central trunk, located at western margins of continents and at mid latitudes, hot and dry summers with cool and moist winters, lack an understory and ground litter that is highly flammable Sclerophyllous - correct answers Evergreen trees with small leaves, thick cuticles, glandular hairs, and sunken stomata that all minimize water loss that live in temperate shrublands and are adapted to fire Deciduous Forests - correct answers Mark the end of the growing season with autumn colors where chlorophyll is lost Conifer Forests - correct answers Broad, circumpolar belt in the Northern Hemisphere in mountain ranges, low temperature and low precipitation with needle leaf trees Boreal Forest (Taiga) - correct answers Large expanse of conifer forest which were formerly covered in glaciers and now account for the largest vegetation formation on Earth Permafrost - correct answers Perennially frozen ground in sub zero temperatures and can be 100 m deep, ability to thaw in the summer, impermeable to water which forces it to stay on the surface creating swampy areas that allow plants to exist Tundra - correct answers Frozen land at high latitudes with up to 100% plant cover in wet soils Polar Desert - correct answers Low plant cover in the tundra Alpine tundra - correct answers Lower latitude and high altitude tundra with rocky terrain and high plant cover How do human effect forest cover? - correct answers Agriculture, grazing, harvesting for timber Forest sustainability efforts - correct answers Clear cutting, seed tree cutting which cuts all trees besides seed-bearing ones How does harvesting effect Forests? - correct answers Alter nutrient cycling, increases solar radiation on soil, high decomposition rates, nutrients leech from soil in precipitation which increases Nitrate concentration in stream water Classifications of aquatic ecosystems - correct answers Salinity and physical features Lotic freshwater - correct answers Flowing Lentic freshwater - correct answers Non-flowing Lakes - correct answers Inland depressions that contain lentic water, outlet streams, and originate from erosion and deposition (oxbow lakes) as well as other non geological activities such as beaver dams, human activity, quarries, and surface mines Physical characteristics of lakes - correct answers Variation in oxygen, temperature, and ligh How does solar radiation absorbance change with depth? - correct answers There is a higher absorbance at lower depths which is affected by silt and plankton How does oxygen concentration in lakes vary seasonally? - correct answers Oxygen is consumed by decomposers and is the limiting factor during the summer when decomposition is highest Horizontal stratification of lakes - correct answers Littoral: shallow and light reaches the bottom; Limnetic: open water extending to light penetration Vertical stratification of lakes - correct answers Limnetic/littoral: top layer; Profundal: below light penetration at compensation depth; Benthic: bottom layer and is location of decomposition Nekton - correct answers Free swimming organisms Eutrophy - correct answers Nutrient rich lakes with a high surface to volume ratio and typically surrounded by deciduous forest or farmland that give rise to agal mats and bottom growing plants Oligotrophy - correct answers Nutrient poor lakes with a low surface area to volume ratio that gives little nutrient input compared to the volume Dystrophic lakes - correct answers Organic matter rich lakes that stain water brown Streams - correct answers Originate from springs, ponds, lakes, or glaciers whose direction of flow dictated by geography; able to change depending on the source and destination How do streams change depending upon their source and destination? - correct answers Near source: small, straight, and swift with a rocky bottom; Less steep gradient: slow, meander, deposit sediments; Near destination: decrease in velocity, release all sediments, form a delta How do streams increase in order? - correct answers Increases when another stream of the same order joins it; ex. two 1st order streams meet to form a 2nd order stream What effects stream velocity? - correct answers Shape, steepness, width, depth, bottom, intensity of precipitation Streamflow; Q = Velocity * Area - correct answers Amount of water discharged by a stream and influences temperature, oxygen content, rate of nutrient spiraling, and physical structure Headwater - correct answers 1st - 3rd order streams and are typically cold, fast moving, and shaded; primary productivity is low and dependent on detritus and predators are small fish 4th - 6th Order Streams - correct answers Medium sized streams with a higher temperature and gradient decrease; GPP is greater than respiration where dominant consumers are collectors and grazers 6th - 10th order streams - correct answers Widest and deepest streams where the current slows, sediments accumulate and autotrophic production increase; Fine Particular Organic Matter (FPOM) is the main energy source and consumers are bottom living collectors and not plankton because of the high concentration of dissolved organic matter Estuaries - correct answers Semi-enclosed section of coastal water where fresh and salt water mix making complex currents that create a nutrient trap; currents vary with size, shape, volume, season, tides, and winds How must organisms adapt in estuaries? - correct answers They must adapt to changing salinity so most habitat the benthos and are fully marine; inflowing rivers are nutrient-poor but vertical mixing traps nutrients and oxygen from the tides Ocean zonation - correct answers Benthic (bottom), pelagic (whole body), neritic (over the shelf), oceanic (over abyssal plane) Pelagic zonation - correct answers Epipelagic (photic): light penetration with sharp gradiations; Mesopelagic: low light and gradual temperature change with low oxygen concentration and high nutrients; Bathylpelagic: dark besides bio-luminescence; low temperatures; Abyssalpelagic: extends to sea floor Hadalpelagic: deep sea trenches Benthos - correct answers Organisms on the sea floor where there is no light and therefore no photosynthesis and must be dependent on organic matter from shallow zones to sink; high species diversity where bacteria that synthesize proteins are a source of nutrients Coral Reefs - correct answers Warm, shallow, tropical waters formed by dead skeletal materials built by carbonate secreting organisms such as coral, algae, and formanifera; symbiotic relations between coral and algae as a location for attachments and photosynthetic products How does an increase in concentration of carbon dioxide effect coral reef formation? - correct answers Higher CO2 concentration does not allow calcium to precipitate; calcium also needs low salinity in order to precipitate How do coral reefs support biodiversity? - correct answers Modular, sessile organisms are supported by dead predecessors, zooxanthellae (algae) live in gastrodermal layer, provide a habitat for bacteria, mollusks, echinoderms, worms, sponges, fishes, and more Dead Zones - correct answers Area where there is no life and unnaturally high concentrations of Nitrogen and Phosphorous which causes unnaturally high NPP by phytoplankton and therefore higher bacteria respiration and lower concentrations of oxygen and causing organisms to die; prevalent in high population coastal zones or farmland Which phyla has the largest number of species? - correct answers Coleopiera (beetles) How does evolution change Earth's biodiversity over time? - correct answers Leads to flux that result in speciation or extinction where the number of species has increased over time with only few exceptions How have terrestrial vascular plants changed in species biodiversity over time? - correct answers The number of species has gradually increased while the dominant groups have shifted away from ferns to angiosperms End of Permian (225 mya) - correct answers 90% of shallow marine invertebrates lost End of Crustaceous (65 mya) - correct answers Asteroid-caused temperature change where large ectotherms (dinosaurs) went extinct and small mammals survived During the Plistocene (10,000 years ago) - correct answers Ice Age mammals went extinct due to a global increase in climate that melted ice sheets and lead to an increase in human hunting How does biodiversity change with geographic patterns? - correct answers Decline with movement away from the equator while the underlying pattern id complex and disrupted by other variables How does the age of a community effect biodiversity? - correct answers Older communities have greater diversity How does climate stability effect biodiversity? - correct answers More stable climates have more species How does spatial herterogeneity effect biodiversity? - correct answers Greater heterogeneity leads to a higher availability of niches Refuges - correct answers Habitable microclimates during glacial periods which lead to movement of species How does Area effect species diversity? - correct answers Greater area leads to greater biodversity and explains latitudinal gradient because surface area decreases as you move up the poles; gradient doesn't align with mammals but does align with oceans Thermal energy - correct answers Effect climate and resource availability and has a positive relationship between potential evapotranspiration and species richness; greater energy allow support of more biomass and increased abundance How does sea surface temperature (SST) relate to species richness? - correct answers Greater SST leads to greater richness which aligns with greater richness closer to the equator Diversity patterns seen in plants - correct answers Energy and precipitation are good predictors of richness along with actual evapotranspiration Relationship between tree richness and vertebrate richness - correct answers Greater NPP can support greater biodiversity and can be seen at different spatial scaes When does solar radiation have the greatest effect in the Northern hemisphere - correct answers During the summer months of June through August because it determines PET and SST and decline from equator to poles How does seasonality patterns effect diversity in pelagic and benthic species? - correct answers Seasonality patterns influence diversity more than annual productivity due to thermoclines and vertical nutrient transport effect on NPP Northern latitudes have the greatest NPP in which seasons? - correct answers Summer and summer due to nutrient mixing Environmental energy hypothesis - correct answers Energy flux per unit area is the primary determinant of species richness which results in a latitudinal gradient How are plants related to the environmental energy hypothesis? - correct answers Primary productivity is the actual energy captured and correlates with AET How do terrestrial animals relate to the environmental energy hypothesis? - correct answers Closely tied with PET and temperature than NPP and is better represented by thermal energy rather than food energy because of endothermic absorbance of heat Parallel relationship with elevation and latitudinal gradient - correct answers Less richness with increases elevation seen in birds, mammals, and vascular plants due to a more stressful environment, geographic isolation, and/or variations in PET, AET, temperature, and NPP What is the main constraint on NPP in marine environments? - correct answers Nutrient availability which is related to seasonality Alpha (local) diversity - correct answers Species diversity of individual communities which is small and hard to quantify due to the difficulty of defining boundaries and changing patterns over time during succession and disturbances Beta diversity - correct answers Variation in diversity among sites in a geographic area and can be described as comparative diversity between communities Gamma (regional) diversity - correct answers Total species diversity across all communities within a geographic area with a comparison of broad scale patterns in relation to time How does time effect biodiversity? - correct answers Regional diversity changes over geological time scales due to evolution, species emergence or extinction, changes in climate, and range shifts Endemic - correct answers Native species with small, restricted geographic ranges and are more susceptible to human activity because they are not evenly distributed globally or regionally Hot Spots - correct answers Unusually high number of endemic species and diversity which accounts for vulnerability to human impact and therefore have the highest priority for conservation How does Earth's tilt affect climate? - correct answers Causes seasons by changing the amount of sunlight striking different parts of the Earth, changes orbit gradually, and affects life and evolution over all geological time Inequality in Earth's climate temperature increase - correct answers Largest in arctic, where winters show the greatest warming, minimum temperatures rise twice as fast as the maximum temperatures which leads to a temperature range decrease and 10% less snow cover How does body size effect endotherm heat dissipation? - correct answers Larger body size has a lower surface area to volume ratio and therefore less heat dissipation How are ectotherm's metabolic rates effected by temperature? - correct answers Higher temperatures leads to higher metabolic rate and are more vulnerable to climate change and need more food How has climate temperature increase effected terrestrial plants? - correct answers More availability of CO2 has lead to longer growing seasons and more droughts which leads to higher tree morality Phenology - correct answers Timing of seasonal activities such as migration, hibernation, etc. which are related to seasonal changes How has climate change effected phenology? - correct answers Spring activities have been happening earlier such as egg laying dates and migration timing; shifts are largest at higher latitudes and can vary among species How has climate change shifted species distribution? - correct answers Higher temperatures lead to shifts towards higher latitudes and elevations as species follow climate change How has climate change affected species interactions? - correct answers Different species response differently and can throw off correlation to resource availability and lead to a mismatch between reproduction and food supply because of different cues per species; some species have increased in fitness at the expense of the other