ANIMAL BEHAVIOR AND ECOLOGY SUMMER ASSIGNMENT
AP BIOLOGY
DR WEINER
Read ch 51, 53, 54, 55 and answer the following questions
1. A female cat in heat urinates more often and in many places. Male cats congregate near the
urine deposits and fight with each other. Which of the following would be an ultimate cause of
the male cats' response to the female's urinating behavior?
a. The males have learned to recognize the specific odor of the urine of a female in
heat.
b. When the males smelled the odor, various neurons in their brains were stimulated.
c. Male cats respond to the odor because it is a means of locating females in heat.
d. Male cats' hormones are triggered by the odor released by the female.
e. The odor serves as a releaser for the instinctive behavior of the males.
2. Which of the following could be classified as habituation?
a. You enter a room and hear a fan motor. After a period of time, you are no longer aware
of the motor's noise.
b. You hear a horn while driving your car. You step on the brakes but notice the sound
came from a side street. You resume your previous speed.
c. One morning you awake to a beep-beep-beep from a garbage truck working on a new
early morning schedule. The next week the garbage truck arrives at the same time and
makes the same noise, but does not wake you up.
d. A and C only
e. A, B, and C
3. Every morning at the same time, John went into the den to feed his new tropical fish. After a
few weeks, he noticed that the fish swam to the top of the tank when he entered the room. This
is an example of
a. habituation.
b. imprinting.
c. classical conditioning.
d. operant conditioning.
e. maturation
4. Circannual rhythms in birds are influenced by
a. periods of food availability
b. reproductive readiness
c. periods of light and darkness
d. magnetic fields
e. lunar cycles
5. Imagine you are designing an experiment amed at determining whether the initiation of
migratory behavior is largely under genetic control. Of the following options, the best way to
proceed is
a. observe genetically distinct populations in the field and see if they have different
migratory patterns
b. perform within-population matings with birds from different populations that have
different migratory habits. Do this in the laboratory and see if offspring display parental
migratory behavior
c. bring animals in the laboratory and determine the conditions under which they become
restless and attempt to migrate
d. perform within-population matings with birds from different populations that have
different migratory habits. Rear the offspring in the absence of their parents and
determine the migratory behavior of the offspring
e. all of the options are equally productive ways to approach the question
6. the behavior of most animals is influenced by the periods of daylight and darkness in the
environment. Fiddler crabs’ courtship behaviors are instead synchronized by the 29 ½ day
cycle of the moon. What is the adaptive significance of using lunar cues?
a. the fiddler crab courtship ritual is highly visual so individual need the light from the full
moon o be able to observe courtship displays
b. egg maturation in fiddler crab females takes 29 ½ days
c. by courting at full and new moon, fiddler crabs link their reproduction to times of
highest tides that disperse larvae to safer, deeper waters
d. the algae that larval fiddler crabs consume for energy and metabolism blooms on a
monthly cycle, so recently hatched larvae have plenty to eat during a crucial time of
their development
e. it takes about 29 days for a fiddler crab to reach sexual maturity
The following questions refer to the following Figure, which depicts the age structure of three
populations.
7. Which population is in the process of decreasing?
a. I
b. II
c. III
d. I and II
e. II and III
8. Which population appears to be stable?
a. I
b. II
c. III
d. I and II
e. II and III
9. Assuming these age-structure diagrams describe human populations, in which population is
unemployment likely to be a societal issue in the future?
a. I
b. II
c. III
d. No differences in the magnitude of future unemployment would be expected among
these populations.
e. It is not possible to infer anything about future social conditions from age-structure
diagrams.
Use the survivorship curves to answer the following questions.
10. Which curve best describes survivorship that is independent of age?
11. Which curve best describes survivorship in mollusks
12. Which curve best describes survivorship in humans aho live in developed nations?
13. A population of ground squirrel has an annual per capita birth rate of 0.06 and annual per capita
death rate of 0.02. calculate an estimate of the number of individuals added to the population
of 1000 individuals in 1 year.
a. 120 individuals added
b. 60 individuals added
c. 20 individuals added
d. 400 individuals added
e. 600 individuals added
14. Which of the following causes populations to shift most quickly from an exponential to a
logistic population growth?
a. increased birth rate
b. removal of predators
c. decreased death rate
d. competition for resources
e. favorable climate conditions
15. Which of the following best describes resource partitioning?
a. Competitive exclusion results in the success of the superior species.
b. Slight variations in niche allow similar species to coexist.
c. Two species can coevolve to share the same niche.
d. Differential resource utilization results in the decrease in species diversity
e. A climax community is reached when no new niches are available.
16. Which of the following is an example of cryptic coloration?
a. bands on a coral snake
b. brown color of tree bark
c. markings of a viceroy butterfly
d. colors of an insect-pollinated flower
e. a "walking stick" insect that resembles a twig
17. Which of the following is an example of Mullerian mimicry?
a. two species of unpalatable butterflies that have the same color pattern
b. a day-flying hawkmoth that looks like a wasp
c. a chameleon that changes its color to look like a dead leaf
d. two species of rattlesnakes that both rattle their tails
e. two species of moths with wing spot that look like owl’s eyes
18. Which of the following is an example of Batesian mimicry?
a. an insect that resembles a twig
b. a butterfly that resembles a leaf
c. a nonvenomous snake that looks like a venomous one
d. a fawn with fur coloring that camouflages it in the forest environment
e. a snapping turtle that uses its tongue to mimic a worm, thus attracting fish
19. Dwarf mistletoes are flowering plants that grow on certain forest trees. They obtain nutrients
and water from the vascular tissues of the trees. The trees derive no known benefits from the
dwarf mistletoes. Which of the following best describes the interactions between dwarf
mistletoes and trees?
a. mutualism
b. parasitism
c. commensalism
d. facilitation
e. competition
20. Evidence shows that some grasses benefit from being grazed. Which of the following terms
would best describe this plant-herbivore interaction?
a. mutualism
b. commensalism
c. parasitism
d. competition
e. predation
Use the following diagram of a hypothetical food web to answer the following questions. The arrows
represent the transfer of food energy between the various trophic levels.
21. Which letter represents an organism that could be a carnivore?
a. A
b. B
c. C
d. D
e. E
22. Which letter represents an organism that could be a producer?
a. A
b. B
c. C
d. D
e. E
23. Which letter represents an organism that could be a primary consumer?
a. A
b. B
c. C
d. D
e. E
24. Which of the following is the most accepted hypothesis as to why invasive species take over
communities into which they have been introduced?
a. Invasive species are more aggressive than natives in competing for the limited resources of
the environment.
b. Invasive species are not held in check by the predators and agents of disease that have
always been in place for the natives.
c. Humans always select which species will outcompete the nuisance native species.
d. Invasive species have a higher reproductive potential than native species.
e. Invasive species come from geographically isolated regions, so when they are introduced to
regions where there is more competition, they thrive.
25. White-breasted nuthatches and Downy woodpeckers both eat insects that hide in the furrows of
bark in hardwood trees. The Downy woodpecker searches for insects by hunting from the
bottom of the tree to the top, whereas the White-breasted nuthatch searches from the top of the
trunk dowm. These hunting behaviors illustrate which of the following?
a. competitive exclusion
b. resource partitioning
c. character displacement
d. keystone species
e. bottup-up and top-down hypotheses
26. Elephants are not the most dominant species in the African grasslands, yet they influence
community structure. The grasslands contain scattered woody plants, but they are kept in check
by the uprooting activities of the elephants. Take away the elephants, and the grasslands
convert to forests or shrublands. The newly growing forests support fewer species than the
previous grasslands. Which describes best why elephants are the keystone species I this
scenario?
a. essentially all of the other species depend on the presence of the elephants to
maintain community
b. grazing animals depend on the elephants to convert forests to grassland
c. elephants prevent drought in African grasslands
d. elephants are the biggest herbivore in the community
e. elephants help other populations survive by keeping out many of the large African
predators
Use the following diagram of five islands formed at around the same time near a particular mainland
and MacArthur and Wilson's island biogeography principles to answer the following questions.
27. Which island would have the greatest species diversity?
28. Which island would exhibit the most impoverished species diversity?
29. Which island would have the lowest extinction rate?
30. Which island would have the lowest immigration rate?
31. The major role of detrivores in ecosystems is to
a. Provide a nutritional source for heterotrophs
b. Recycle chemical nutrients to a form capable of being used by autotrophs
c. Recycle chemical nutrients to a form capable of being used by heterotrophs
d. Prevent the buildup of the organic remains of organisms and waste
e. Return energy lost to the ecosystem by other organisms
32. Subtraction of which of the following will convert gross primary productivity into net primary
productivity?
a. The energy contained in the standing drop
b. The energy used by heterotrophs in respiration
c. The energy used by autotrophs in respiration
d. The energy fixed by photosynthesis
e. All solar energy
33. Which of these ecosystems has the highest net primary productivity per square meter?
a. Savanna
b. Open ocean
c. Boreal forest
d. Tropical rain forest
e. Temperate forest
34. Why is net primary production a more useful measurement to an ecosystem ecologist than
gross primary production?
a. Net primary production can be expressed in energy/unit of area/unit of time
b. Net primary production can be expressed in terms of carbon fixed by photosynthesis
for an entire ecosystem
c. Net primary production represents the stored chemical energy that is available to
consumers in the ecosystem
d. Net primary production is the same as the standing crop
e. Net primary production shows the rate at which the standing crop is utilized by
consumers
35. Aquatic primary productivity is most limited by
a. Light and nutrient availability
b. Predation by primary consumers
c. Increase pressure with depth
d. Pollution
e. Temperature
36. The amount of chemical energy in consumers’ food that is converted to their own new biomass
during a given time period is known as which of the following?
a. Biomass
b. Standing crop
c. Biomagnification
d. Primary production
e. Secondary production
37. How does inefficient transfer of energy among trophic levels result in a typically high
endangerment status of many top-level predators?
a. Top-level predators are destined to have small populations that are sparsely distributed
b. Predators have relatively large population sizes
c. Predators are more disease-prone than animals at lower trophic levels
d. Predators have short life spans and short reproductive periods
e. Top-level predators are more likely to be stricken by parasites
38. Secondary consumers that can eat only primary consumers receive what percent of the energy
fixed by the primary producers in a typical field ecosystem?
a. 0.1%
b. 1.0%
c. 10%
d. 20%
e. 80%
39. Which statement best describes what ultimately happens the chemical energy that is not
converted to new biomass in the process of energy transfer between trophic levels in an
ecosystem?
a. It is undigested and winds up in the feces and is not passed on to higher trophic levels
b. It is used by organisms to maintain their life processes through the reactions of cellular
respiration
c. Heat produced by cellular respiration is used by heterotrophs to thermoregulate
d. It is eliminated as feces or dissipated into space as heat in accordance with the second
law of thermodynamics
e. It is recycled by decomposers to a form that is once again usable by primary producers