STUDY TIPS FOR TEXT * INTRO TO ES * INTERIM 2015
Obviously you should review material from lecture since it is likely to be most important. The
PowerPoints are in the WordPress site. Do also especially focus on the parts of the text highlighted
below and the NOVA video you were assigned to watch.
NOVA VIDEO “Earth from Space”
There were parts that were probably less relevant and parts that were very relevant to the material we
have been covering. I would definitely focus on…
1. Water cycle aspects –they do a good job visualizing parts of water cycle-Monsoons!
Why is the Antarctic so much colder than the Arctic? Why does dense salty water flow from the
Antarctic and how does it affect the oceans and the earth in general? Have you heard of the Gulf
stream? Why are the coastal areas of China and Japan not as cold as we are? How do these ocean
currents affect the climate?
2. They talked about volcanic eruptions and then deep sea vents and how the hot, dense salty water
dissolves minerals that are swept up into upwellings regions to fertilize plankton (do remember that
other nutrients from marine organisms are also swept up to the surface by ocean currents-where do
dead bodies go in the oceans?).
3. What does the Sahara have to do with the Amazon?
Why is the oxygen emitted from the Amazonian rainforest not getting to the rest of the world? Which
aquatic photosynthesizers at the mouth of the Amazon are contributing lots of oxygen?
4. Lightening fixes nitrogen as do bacteria! (what does fix that mean?) They also start fires-which
really quickly convert all that biomass to nutrient rich ash.
CH3
Browse through 3.1 and 3.2..good background, hopefully you read and think…”oh yeah, I remember
learning this in high school.” In reality I am not going to have you define terms in these two sections
or anything!
Do focus on 3.3-3.5 but you can skip the phosphorous cycle. I also would not ask you to know the
different forms of nitrogen precisely. Do know that atmospheric nitrogen gas is not directly available to
any organisms other than bacteria!
I thought Fig 3.14 was odd for a couple reasons.
Be familiar with all the images that we went over in class.
CH4
The case study at the start of the chapter talks about some of the same finches we went over when
we talked about evolution. Do read this case study.
Do read over these sections although we did not cover them in class… “All species live within limits”
“The ecological niche….””Speciation maintains diversity” and “Taxonomy describes….” All good
things to know-These sections help you understand the natural world out there but I probably would
not test you on terms!
Exploring Science section on Flu Vaccines-kind of interesting….but I am not going to test you on it.
4.1 We talked about evolution in class so review that. This section also talks about
4.2 We went over much of this in class so do focus on this material. I tend to avoid using the term
symbiosis because it often causes confusion and the way it is used by the public is not the way it is
used in ecology so I just avoid it altogether.
Do know what a keystone species is-they go over the famous story of sea otters, sea urchins and
kelp. Did that story make sense?
4.3 What is the difference between abundance and diversity?
Do simply know that members of a population may be random, uniform or clustered (fig 4.22)
What is community complexity?
There are three main paragraphs under “Resilience and stability…” Focus on the last two paragraphs
where they talk about MacArthur and Tilman (do not count the very short last paragraph).
“Edges and boundaries…”
DO know terms in here.
DO read the section on introducing earthworms under “What do you think?” This research was done
in MN!
We went of the section on “The nature of communities…”-so do review that.
Do know the terms and read the remaining couple pages (terms like primary and secondary
succession and disturbance).
The last section on introduced species should also give you some good background.
CH 11 Biodiversity 227-232 Up to but not including “We are accelerating extinction rates.”
We did not spend time in class talking about biodiversity but I wanted to be sure you all had a sense
of what we mean when we use this term.
I am not sure the text did a good job of describing genetic, species and ecological diversity. A good
way to think about genetic diversity within species is to think about all the diversity that is in dogs-all
the traits we have selected for artificially represents the genetic diversity that underlies all those traits(long fur, short fur, coarse fur, smooth fur, long ears, short ears, smushed face, pointy face, long legs,
short legs etc..).
Species diversity is straightforward-really just the number of different species.
Ecological diversity really just describes the number of different communities and ecosystems (the
most different kinds of “places”). An island with tall mountains, big marshy areas, a lake, a river, a
forest and a prairie would be high in ecological diversity.
Don’t worry about different species definitions.
Do read over the rest-good background info.
CH5
Be familiar with the major biomes and some of their characteristics….which ones are likely to have
poor soils and why? Which ones are frozen for many months of the year?
We did kind of skip freshwater and marine biomes so do understand the zonation that takes place in
these systems (no need to know terms) but do lo and the organisms found there at the surface
different from the deep parts of lakes and the ocean
CH7
All of chapter 7 is nicely written and has important concepts in it. Again my one concern was the idea
that there are two worlds. We looked at the video in class on Friday that really undermines this
concept and shows how dated it is.