Biodiversity, Species | Chapter 5 – Test Questions & Answers

CHAPTER 5—BIODIVERSITY, SPECIES INTERACTIONS, AND POPULATION CONTROL

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. What was the primary reason the southern sea otter nearly went extinct by the early 1900s?

2. The primary reason why southern sea otter recovery is important is because they ____.

3. Species can, over a long period of time, develop adaptations that allow them to reduce or avoid competition by sharing resources. This is called ____.

4. Some prey species discourage predators with chemicals that are poisonous, irritating, foul smelling, or bad tasting. What is this called?

5. When populations of two different species interact over long periods of time, changes in the gene pool of one species can lead to changes in the gene pool of the other. What is this called?

6. Bats prey on certain species of moths by using high frequency echolocation to locate their prey. Certain moths have evolved ears that can hear these frequencies allowing them to escape. This is an example of ____.

7. What is said to occur when one organism feeds on another organism by living on or in the other organism?

8. Parasites ____.

9. From the ____ point of view, parasites are harmful, but from the ____ perspective, parasites can promote diversity.

10. When two species behave in ways that benefit both by providing each with food, shelter, or some other resource, it is called ____.

11. The relationship between clownfish and sea anemone is called ____.

12. The relationship between bacteria that live in the digestive systems of animals, such as humans, is ____.

13. What occurs when an interaction benefits one species but has little, if any, effect on the other?

14. Plants such as bromeliads share a commensalism interaction with large trees in tropical and subtropical forests by attaching to the trunks or branches of the trees. The bromeliads are an example of ____.

15. Which of the following is not considered a form of nondestructive behavior?

16. What occurs when members of two or more species interact to gain access to the same limited resources?

17. What is the most common interaction between species?

18. If multiple species find themselves competing for the same resource, the competition can be reduced by which of the following?

19. The non-poisonous ____ butterfly gains protection by looking like the bad-tasting ____ butterfly, which is a protective device known as ____.

20. Kelp forests help reduce ____ by blunting the force of incoming waves and trapping some of the outgoing sand.

21. Kelp forests are a very important ecosystem in marine waters by supporting important biodiversity. These kelp forests are threatened by all of the following except _____.

22. What is a population’s distribution of individuals among various age groups called?

23. What describes an organism that is too old to reproduce?

24. Each population in an ecosystem has a ____ to variations in its physical and chemical environment.

25. Too much or too little of any physical or chemical factor can prevent the growth of a population, even if all other factors are at or near the optimum conditions. What is this ecological principle?

26. What is the number of individuals in a population found within a defined area or volume that can limit the size of some populations?

27. Some species that tend to reproduce later in life and have a small number of offspring with long life spans ____.

28. There are ____ limits to population growth in nature.

29. The maximum population of a given species that a particular habitat can sustain indefinitely is the definition of ____.

30. When plotting the number of individuals in a population against time, the data yield a J-shaped curve. What does this curve indicate?

31. Exponential growth followed by a steady decrease in population growth until the population size stabilizes is typical of ____.

32. By 1900, white-tailed deer populations in the U.S. were reduced to about ____, but now, since laws have been passed to protect them and their natural predators have nearly been eliminated, their population is over ____ in the U.S.

33. What would cause a population to overshoot its carrying capacity?

34. A group of interbreeding individuals of the same species in the same geographic region is called a(n) ____.

35. What is the most common distribution of populations?

36. A population increases through birth and ____.

37. Emigration is the ____.

38. Kelp forests are composed of large concentrations of a(n) ____.

39. Which of the following has caused the population of the southern sea otters to fluctuate?

40. What is succession that begins in an area where an ecosystem has been disturbed, removed, or destroyed, and that contains soil or bottom sediment?

41. Which of the following exhibits secondary ecological succession?

42. The situation in which one set of species makes an area suitable for species with different niche requirements and often, less suitable for itself, is called ____.

43. Late successional plants are largely unaffected by plants at earlier stages of succession because they are not in direct competition for resources, a factor called ____.

44. Most ecologists now recognize that mature, late-successional ecosystems ____.

45. The capacity to withstand external stress and disturbance is called ____.

46. The ability of a living system to survive moderate disturbances is called ____.

47. What refers to the ability of a living system to be restored after a period of moderate to severe disturbance?

48. If the resilience of a damaged ecosystem is low enough, the degraded area may not be restored by secondary succession. When this happens, the damaged ecosystem has reached ____.

49. Grasslands have ____ and can burn easily.

50. Which of the following exhibits primary succession?

1. The southern sea otter is a tool-using mammal.

2. The most common interaction between species is commensalism.

3. Humans compete with many other species for space, food, and other resources.

4. Animal predators tend to kill the sick, weak, aged, and least fit members of a species because they are the easiest to catch.

5. In predator-prey relationships, the predator is seeking food for itself and its offspring, while the prey is seeking not to become food for the predator. As a result, predator and prey populations exert tremendous natural selection pressures on each other.

6. At the population level, parasites are always harmful to the host species.

7. Organisms with clumped distributions are fairly rare.

8. Large mammals, such as elephants and rhinoceroses, are especially vulnerable to extinction because of their reproductive patterns.

9. The growth rate of a population increases as its size nears the carrying capacity of its environment.

10. The carrying capacity of any given area is not fixed.

11. Humans are exempt from population overshoot and dieback.

12. Primary and secondary ecological succession tend to increase biodiversity of communities and ecosystems by increasing species richness and interactions among species.

13. Scientists have changed their view about a stable type of climax community as the end product of succession and are now suggesting we can not predict the course of succession.

14. Grasslands have a high resilience and therefore can recover quickly following a fire.

15. In communities and ecosystems the types and numbers of species change in response to changing environmental conditions.

1. The southern sea otter has been classified as a(n) ____________________ species because in their absence, kelp forests would probably be destroyed.

2. ____________________ is a competitive interaction between species for food, water, light and/or space.

3. When two or more species compete with one another their niches are said to ____________________.

4. ____________________ occurs when a member of one species feeds directly on all or part of a member of another species.

5. Bad-tasting, bad-smelling, toxic, or stinging-prey species advertise their characteristics using ____________________.

6. Some prey species make themselves larger or mimic a predator, both of which are called ____________________.

7. When two different species interact over a long time, changes in the gene pool help both species to become more competitive or avoid competition. This is called _______________,

8. In _______________, two species behave in ways that benefit both by providing each with needed resources.

9. Vast armies of ____________________ inhabit the digestive tracts of animals, such as humans, and help break down or digest their food.

10. The gradual change in species composition in a given area is called ____________________.

11. The most common form of population dispersion found in nature is ____________________.

12. ____________________ is the combination of all factors that act to limit the growth of a population.

13. A population exceeding its carrying capacity will suffer a(n) ____________________ or ____________________, unless the excess individuals can switch to new resources or move to a new area.

14. ____________________ involves the gradual establishment of biotic communities in lifeless areas where there is no soil.

15. One of the factors determining the rate of succession is _______________, in which one set of species makes an area suitable for other species with different requirements.

1. Describe what happens when species partition resources.

2. What method of hunting prey do Arctic foxes use?

3. Determine which portion of the accompanying graph represents the number of reindeer that can be sustained indefinitely in a given area. What term illustrates this?

4. What does it mean when a population uses up their resource supplies and temporarily overshoots? Which letter on this graph represents when this has occurred to a certain reindeer population?

5. What happens to a population if a dieback occurs, and which portion of the graph represents this?

1. Explain why it is important to care about the survival of the endangered southern sea otters of California.

2. Using a small rodent, such as a field mouse, and a predator, such as a snake, explain how coevolution works.

3. At the present time the global human population surpasses seven billion people. If we exceed the carrying capacity of the earth, the human population may suffer a substantial collapse.

Consider the following formula for population change:

population change = (births + immigration)  (deaths + emigration)

What will be required of humans in order to stabilize or reduce our population?

4. Some people blame white-tailed deer for invading suburban yards and gardens. Discuss potential solutions to this problem.

5. Describe the three factors ecologists have identified that affect how and at what rate succession occurs.