BISC 003:
Exam #1 Study Guide
Exam #1 Study Guide:
1) When did the current human population explosion begin, and in which countries is it growing
fastest (North or South)? How does per capita resource demand differ between North and South
countries?
2) Sustained health of marine, freshwater, agricultural, forest and grasslands is important for humans.
Why?
3) Explain what the scientific community believes to be the cause of the strong relationship between
increasing average global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide. What is the Industrial
Revolution and when did it begin?
4) Maintaining biodiversity is important because ….
5) Know the definition and relationship between sustainability, stewardship and sound science.
6) Does sustainability mean the same for all disciplines (economics, sociology, ecology)?
7) What issues of justice and equity need consideration for stewardship. Be able to recognize an
example of environmental racism.
8) Who was John Muir? How was Rachel Carson? Compare Environmentalism and Wise-Use
Movement ideology, i.e. their perspective of the natural world and mans role in it.
9) Know the scientific method. What meant by an experimental control.
10) Recognize when the terms theory, concept and natural law are properly used.
11) What situations favor the possibility of a scientific controversy?
12) Contrast sound science and junk science.
13) Look over the Easter Island story to see how man can exceed the carrying capacity of his
environment, which results in ecosystem degradation and population crash (not without social strife
and brutal civil war first).
14) What are ecosystems and what three factors determine the type of terrestrial (land) ecosystems?
15) What’s an ecotone and transitional ecosystem? Why more biodiversity their?
16) Look over these six major terrestrial (land) biome types, temperate deciduous forest biome,
grassland biomes, desert biomes, tropical rain forest, coniferous forest biome, tundra. Know
approximately where these are located across North and South America.
17) Environmental factors include conditions and resources. What are some abiotic conditions
organisms must be able to tolerate in order to survive? Know what is meant by tolerance limits,
stress conditions and optimum conditions.
18) Be able to distinguish conditions and resources for plants.
19) Realize that climate is characterized by average annual temperature and precipitation rather than
weather, which varies day to day and with seasons. How do shifts in climate (temperature vs
precipitation) change biomes. When forest, desert, tundra?
20) Recognize that altitude increases mimic climate changes see moving to higher latitude, i.e. towards
the poles. For example, the high alpine tundra is like the arctic tundra.
21) Know your trophic structure and trophic levels.
22) What is the function of decomposers and detritus feeders?
23) Who are autotrophs versus heterotrophs? Define each term.
24) Know consumer types and important consumer relationships.
25) Why does the amount of energy and biomass in an ecosystem decrease with higher trophic levels,
like a pyramid starting with a wide base and narrowing to a pointed top?
26) What’s the difference between a food chain and a food web. Do all organisms always feed on the
same trophic level?
BISC 003:
Exam #1 Study Guide
27) We assumed in our trophic level activity that herbivores had an ecological efficiency of 10%, is this
actually seen among different herbivores? Can a person with a carnivorous diet increase their
ecological efficiency by only changing the meat type?
28) From the ecological perspective, who is a more efficient consumer a vegetarian or a fish eater?
29) Be able to recognize examples of mutualism.
30) What factors help limit interspecific competition? What’s a niche? What’s a habitat?
31) Energy flows and nutrients cycle; think about how these core concepts of ecosystem function relate
to the first two principles of ecosystem sustainability.
32) What are the first two principles of ecosystem sustainability? How does the human system violate
these principles; think about burning fossil fuels and landfills for solid waste.
33) What properties of matter are similar, and which properties are unique to each?
34) Know energy types and the two laws of thermodynamics. Be able to recognize energy
transformation scenarios by type. Don’t forget heat is lost with each energy transformation!
35) What is entropy? Must energy be added to reaction or process if it is to become more complex and
organized? For examples, your bedroom or my office.
36) Know respiration and photosynthesis reactions in terms of chemicals involved and energy release or
inputs required. Plant and Animals do which of these?
37) What are sources of inorganic carbon (carbon dioxide and bicarbonate) and where are they found?
38) How can carbon get stored in sediments over millions of years – in what form (organic or
inorganic)? How has man released this stored carbon?
39) Who does deforestation and fires both impact the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide?
40) Which microbial process is the only means of getting atmospheric N-gas (N2) into biomass?
41) Microbes also mineralize organic nitrogen to ammonia, perform nitrification of ammonia to nitrate,
and others perform denitrification of nitrate back to N-gas which escapes the ecosystem to the
atmosphere.
42) Understand population equilibrium, the factors contributing to biotic potential and environmental
resistance, and dynamic balance.
43) How can the two very different reproductive strategies both work? Which has more efficient
recruitment?
44) Why can a J-curve happen – what conditions (or lack of) needs to exist? What are three possible
aftermaths of a J-curve crash? Why the crash?
45) What happens to the ecosystem when a population exceeds its carrying capacity? What if the
population is below its critical number?
46) Why does an S-curve happen; is this a more sustainable situation than a J-curve?
47) Be able to recognize environmental resistance factors as either population density-dependent or
population density independent.
48) Natural enemies are parasites and predators. How do predator and prey population densities change
overtime in the absence of other environmental resistance factors (Isle Royale example)?
49) What’s overgrazing? What’s the third principle of sustainable ecosystems?
50) How do plants deal with competition between species (interspecific) so to maintain higher
biodiversity? Know examples and meaning for mutualism, microclimate, adaptations, and balanced
herbivory.
BISC 003:
Exam #1 Study Guide
Exam #1: Complete Vocabulary List:
Developing countries(South),
industrialized
countries(North),
per capita resource demand,
habitat alteration,
pollution,
global climate change
greenhouse gas
biodiversity,
sustainability,
stewardship,
Environmentalism
“wise-use” movement
sound science,
sustainable yields,
sustainable development,
equity,
environmental racism,
environmental movement,
scientific method, facts,
atomic theory,
hypothesis,
theory,
natural laws,
instruments,
scientific community,
junk science
Biota (biotic community),
abiotic,
species,
population,
ecosystem,
ecology,
ecologist,
ecotone,
landscape,
biosphere,
trophic structure,
photosynthesis,
primary producers,
autotrophs,
heterotrophs,
consumers,
detritus,
detritus feeders,
decomposers,
primary consumers,
herbivores,
secondary consumers,
carnivores,
omnivores,
predator,
predator-prey,
parasites,
host-parasite,
pathogens (infectious disease),
food chain,
food web,
trophic levels,
biomass,
biomass pyramid,
mutualistic symbiosis
(mutualism),
habitat,
ecological niche,
abiotic factors,
conditions and resources,
optimum,
range of tolerance,
limits of tolerance,
zones of stress,
temperate deciduous forest
biome,
grassland biomes,
desert biomes,
tropical rain forest,
coniferous forest biome,
Neolithic Revolution
Industrial Revolution
matter,
inorganic matter,
organic matter,
energy,
kinetic energy,
potential energy,
chemical energy,
calorie,
the law of conservation of
energy,
the first law of
thermodynamics,
second law of
thermodynamics,
entropy,
cell respiration,
first basic principle of
ecosystem sustainability,
second basic principle of
ecosystem sustainability ,
fossil fuel,
deforestation,
industrial nitrogen fixation,
biological nitrogen fixation,
nitrification,
denitrification
Population equilibrium,
biotic potential,
recruitment,
reproductive strategies,
exponential increase,
population explosion,
environmental resistance,
replacement level,
carrying capacity,
dynamic balance,
population density,
critical number,
threatened species,
endangered species,
parasitic organisms,
natural enemies,
overgrazing,
third basic principle of
ecosystem sustainability,
interspecific competition,
epiphytes,
microclimate,
balanced herbivory,
territoriality,
intraspecific competition