AP BIOLOGY
Supplemental Assignment
Mrs. Isengard-Westside High School
This guide is used to review Atoms & Molecules, and Ecology. These are two units that
are covered in your prerequisite Biology and Chemistry courses. Please use:
Chapters 2& 3 for Atoms & Molecules
Chapters 50-56 for Ecology & Animal Behavior
You may use your textbook and any online resources (please cite any you use) to answer
the following questions. This assignment will be due the first day of school and the
information will appear in a test that month. No LATE Assignments will be accepted
Answer the following questions in as much detail as possible and print out to turn in to
me. This can be typed or written but must be legible. I will not accept email submissions
for this assignment:
Name-_______________________________
Summer Assignment
1) “Life” is easy to recognize but difficult to define. The dictionary defines life as
“the state or quality that distinguishes living beings or organisms from dead ones
and from inorganic matter, characterized chiefly by metabolism, growth, and the
ability to reproduce and respond to stimuli.” Biology textbooks usually elaborate
slightly; for example, according to a popular text, living things:
a. Are highly organized compared to natural inanimate objects.
b. Display homeostasis, maintaining a relatively constant internal
environment.
c. Reproduce themselves.
d. Grow and develop from simple beginnings.
e. Take energy and matter from the environment and transform it.
f. Respond to stimuli.
g. Show adaptation to their environment.
Score yourself, a car, and a cactus with respect to these characteristics. Is there any grey
area? In the context of what you just did, why could defining life be an elusive business?
2) In 1944, at the beginning of he book, What is Life, the great physicist Erwin
Schrödinger (of cat fame) asked the following question: “How can the events in
time and space which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism
be accounted for by physics and chemistry?” What would be your answer today?
Do you think there are peculiar properties of living systems that disobey the laws
of physics and chemistry? Explain your answer.
3) It seems to be human nature to try and group living things into categories. These
groupings have helped philosophers and naturalists better understand the living
world around them. A taxon is the name given to any specific level of
organization in our current classification system. Identify the taxonomic levels
that biologists most frequently use. How are they organized? Can taxonomic
systems be used to show phylogeny (aka evolutionary relationships) of
organisms?
4) Chapter 1 includes heredity (i.e. DNA and genes) as well as evolution. Discuss
the connection between heredity and evolution?
5) What is meant by the term “descent with modification?”
6) Science is often described to work by a set of steps or by a specific method. Why
is this not necessarily true?
7) What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?
8) What is the arrangement of protons, neutrons and, electrons in an atom? Describe
this verbally then diagrammatically.
9) A carbon atom contains six protons and six neutrons.
a. Without looking at a periodic table what is carbons atomic number and
atomic weight? How did you know this?
b. How many electrons does it have? How many valence electrons does it
have? How did you know this?
c. How many additional electrons must it add to fill its outermost shell?
How does this affect carbon’s chemical behavior?
d. Carbon with an atomic weight of 14 is radioactive. How does it differ in
structure from nonradioactive carbon? How does this difference affect its
chemical behavior?
10) Sketch the electron shell configuration of a sodium atom. According to the octet
rule, what would be the simplest way for a sodium atom to achieve electron
stability?
11) Many elements have isotopes, which are rare variants of the element with
additional neutrons in the nucleus. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that has
one neutron. Does the neutron change the chemical reactivity of deuterium,
compared with normal hydrogen? Explain why or why not.
12) The concepts of chemical bonding and electronegativity allow us to predict
whether a molecule will be polar or nonpolar, and how it will interact with water.
Typically, a difference in electronegativity greater than 0.5 will result in polarity.
For each of the bonds below indicate:
a) Whether the bond is polar or nonpolar
N-H
O-H
b) If polar which end is + end
c) How a molecule with the bond will interact with water (hydrophilic or
hydrophobic).
C-H
C=O
C-N
C-C
H-H
O-P
13) Compare electron behavior in ionic, covalent, and hydrogen bonds. Which is
strongest, and why?
14) What is the difference between a covalent and a non-covalent bond?
15) Hydrogen bonds and van der Waals attractions are important in the interactions
between molecules in biology.
a. Describe the differences and similarities between van der Waals
attractions and hydrogen bonds.
b. Which of the two types of interactions would form (1) between two
hydrogens bound to carbon atoms, (2) between a nitrogen atom and a
hydrogen bound to a carbon atom, and (3) between a nitrogen atom and a
hydrogen bound to an oxygen atom?
16) How do variations in electronegativity result in the unequal sharing of electrons in
polar molecules?
17) Consider the molecule carbon dioxide. Are the bonds between the C and the O
atoms ionic or covalent? Is this molecule hydrophobic or hydrophilic? Explain
your answers.
18) Here is the structure of the molecule glycine:
a) Is this molecule hydrophilic or hydrophobic? Explain.
b) Draw two glycine molecues and show how they can be linked by
dehydration synthesis.
19) What is the difference between a solute and a solvent?
20) What is meant by the terms osmosis and diffusion? Are they the same thing?
How are they related to the concepts or hypertonic, isotonic, and hypotonic?
21) Transpiration is the name given to how water travels up a plant, from its roots to
its leaves. Discuss how this happens in the context of waters special properties.
22) The organic chemistry of living cells is said to be special for two reasons: it
occurs in an aqueous environment and it accomplishes some very complex
reactions. But do you suppose it’s really all that much different from the organic
chemistry carried out in the top laboratories in the world? Why or why not?
23) What is pH? What does the pH scale represent? How do you calculate pH?
24) Why is pH important to the functioning of biological systems?
25) How are two monomers linked together? Broken down?
26) Draw the chemical structure of a disaccharide formed by two glucose
monosaccharides.
27) Examine the glucose molecule shown in your textbook. Identify the functional
groups on the molecule.
28) What are the structural differences between alpha-glucose and beta-glucose?
How does this difference affect the structure of a string of alpha-glucose
molecules in comparison to a string of beta- glucose molecules? Explain why this
happens.
29) Some sugars have other functional groups in addition to those typically present.
Draw the structure of the amino sugar glucosamine, which has an amino group
bonded at carbon #2 of glucose. Would this molecule be more or less polar than
glucose? Explain why.
30) The molecular formula for glucose is C6H12O6. What would be the molecular
formula for a polysaccharide made by linking ten glucose molecules together by
dehydration reactions?
31) What is the difference between fats and oils?
32) Why are phospholipids amphipathic, and how does this result in a lipid bilayer
membrane?
33) If fatty acids are carefully put onto the surface of water, they will form a single
molecular layer. If the mixture is then shaken vigorously, the fatty acids will
form round structures called micelles. Why does this happen? Explain.
34) List the key differences between DNA and RNA and between purines and
pyrimidines.
35) How can DNA molecules be so diverse when they appear to be structurally
similar?
36) What attributes of an amino acid’s R group would make it hydrophobic?
Hydrophilic?
37) Sketch the bonding of two amino acids, glycine and leucine, by a peptide linkage.
Now add a third amino acid, alanine, in the position it would have if added within
a biological system. What is the directionality of this process? Does it grow from
the N-terminus out or the C-terminus out?
The following questions have some notes with it. Please read through it.
38) What was the first 1° structure of a protein to be determined, and how was it
done?
A similar technique based on the overlapping segments is also used to sequence
DNA nucleotides which is called “Chromosome Walking”.
The structure of a protein is so important that changing just one amino acid in a
chain of over 100 can cause a deadly disease.
2° Structure: In many cases you will see a helix or b pleated sheets. Your
textbook doesn’t put the b in front of the pleated sheets, but many references do. The a
and b are just there because the helix structure was discovered first.
39) Which is a stronger structure, an a helix or b pleated sheets. Explain your
answer.
Disulfide bridges do not just form spontaneously. Note that there is a H attached
to the S in Cysteine. Thus a group of enzymes known as Protein Disulfide Isomerases
(PDI’s) must catalyze the reaction by removing the H’s in order for the S-S covalent
bonds to form. Disulfide bridges can occur in both 3° and 4° structures. The process is
still unknown and it is under investigation because it is very hard to study.
4° Structure: Please note that just because the most commonly used example is
hemoglobin with 4 subunits (2 a and 2 b chains), the 4° structure IS NOT the way that 4
polypeptide chains are put together. According to a reader for the AP exam essays, that
was a commonly misused example in the 2001 exam Essay #4 part (a).
40) What is denaturation, and how can it occur? You must be able to explain not just
the what’s (i.e. temp), but the how’s (how does temperature effect the structure).
41) Detergents disrupt hydrophobic interactions by coating hydrophobic molecules
with a molecule that has a hydrophilic surface. When hemoglobin is treated with
a detergent, the four polypeptide chains separate and become random coils.
Explain these observations.
42) The amino acid lysine is at the active site of an enzyme. Normally the enzyme is
active at pH 7. At pH 5, the enzyme is inactive. Explain these observations.
43) Biological systems contain “supermolecular complexes,” which are composed of
individual molecules of RNA and protein that fit together noncovalently. These
complexes can be split apart with detergents that disrupt hydrophobic interactions.
Based on your knowledge, fill in the table at the right to indicate which of the
observations are characteristic of RNA, which are characteristics of proteins, and
which are characteristics of both. Explain your answers.
Observation
Protein
RNA
Has three-dimensional
structure
Monomers connected by NC bonds
3D structure destroyed by
heat
Contains sulfur atoms
Contains phosphorus atoms
44) Fill out the following chart:
Primarily used for
Examples include
Bonds made to form
polymers
Carbohydrate
Lipid
Protein
Nucleic Acid
ECOLOGY
1. List the 5 levels of ecological study and give examples of the focus of inquiry at
each level:
2. Give an example of a purposefully introduced species and an accidentally
introduced species that have become pests in North America:
3. Mountains affect local climate. Describe their influence in the following three
areas:
a. solar radiation:
b. temperature:
c. rainfall:
4. Indicate with a + or – whether the following are relatively high or low in oxygen
level, nutrient content and productivity.
Biome
Oxygen level Nutrient content Productivity
Oligotrophic lake
Eutrophic lake
Headwater of stream
Turbid river
Estuary
5.
6.
7.
8.
Define ecology:
What methods are used to answer ecological questions?
What are biomes?
What accounts for the similarities in life forms found in the same type of biome in
geographically separated areas?
9. Many animals breed in the spring and early summer. What is a probable
proximate cause of this behavior? Probable ultimate cause?
10. What is the sign stimulus for attack behavior in male stickleback fish?
11. Give an example of a FAP in a human infant and the sign stimulus that elicits it.
12. Explain how Zack’s study of whelk-eating crow supports the optimal foraging
theory.
13. Indicate the type of learning illustrated by the following examples:
a. Ewes will adopt and nurse a lamb shortly after they five birth to their own
lamb but will butt and reject a lamb introduced a day or two later.
b. A dog, whose early “accidents” were cleaned up with paper towels
accompanied with harsh discipline, hides under the bed any time a paper
towel is used in the house.
c. Ducklings eventually ignore a cardboard silhouette of a hawk that is
repeatedly flown over them.
d. Kittens stalk and pounce on each other, biting and kicking as they roll
around together.
e. In Pavlov’s experiments, the ringing of a bell caused a dog to salivate.
14. Sow bugs are placed in experimental chambers that are either humid or dry and
have both light and dark areas. In the humid chamber, the sow bugs move into
the dark area and stop moving. In the dry chamber, they move into the dark area
and continue to move about in that area. Explain these experimental results.
15. Why are many interactions between members of the same species agonistic?
16. What mechanisms reduce violent encounters between members of the same social
group?
17. Explain the basis for the distinction between male competition and female choice
in courtship behavior.
18. Natural selection has resulted in exclusive male and parental care being much
more frequent in species with external fertilization, where the male’s genetic
contribution to the offspring is more certain. Explain how such behavior could
evolve.
19. Why is most communication among mammals olfactory and auditory, whereas
communication among birds is visual and auditory?
20. According to kin selection, would an individual be more likely to exhibit altruistic
behavior toward a parent, a sibling, or a first cousin? Explain your answer in
terms of r in Hamilton’s rule.
21. How does the nature vs. nurture controversy apply to behavior?
22. How does this concept of Darwinian fitness apply to behavior?
23. In a mark-recapture study, an ecologist traps, marks and releases 25 voles in a
small wooded area. A week later she resets her traps and captures 30 voles, 10 of
which were marked. What is her estimate of the population of voles in the area?
24. Identify the types of survivorship curves shown below and give examples of
groups that exhibit each curve.
25. Mortality, number of offspring per reproduction, and prenatal investment are
usually interrelated. On the following graphs, sketch the relationship you would
predict between the variables.
26. Label the exponential and logistic growth curves, and show the equation
associated with each curve. What is K for the population show with curve b?
27. List some density-dependent factors that may limit population growth.
28. List some abiotic factors that may cause population fluctuations.
29. Species composition and distribution in most plant communities appear to be
individualistic. What may explain the occasional occurrence of sharp delineations
in species composition between communities?
30. Name the following 2 types of mimicry:
a. Harmless species resembling a poisonous or distasteful species:
b. Mutual imitation by two or more distasteful species:
31. Name and give examples of the interspecific interactions symbolized in the table:
Interactions
Examples
+/+
+/0
+/-
-/-
32. Experimental data from tree hole communities showed that food chains were
longest when food supply at the producer level was greatest. Which hypothesis
about what limits food chain length do these results support?
33. Many freshwater lake communities appear to be organized along the top-down
model. What actions might ecologists take if they wanted to use biomanipulation
to control excessive algae blooms in a lake with four trophic levels (algae,
zooplankton, primary predator fish, and top predator fish)?
34. Describe the effects of the alder stage of succession on soil pH and fertility.
35. List some ecosystems with high rates of production.
36. List some ecosystems with low rates of production.
37. The open ocean has low net primary production yet contributes the greatest
percentage of earth’s net primary production. Explain.
38. Antarctic seas are often more productive than most tropical seas, even though
they are colder and receive lower light intensity. Explain.
39. Why is production efficiency higher for fishes than for birds and mammals?
40. Assuming a 10% trophic efficiency (transfer of energy to the next tropic level),
approximately what proportion of the chemical energy produced in
photosynthesis makes it to a tertiary consumer?
41. In which natural ecosystem do nutrients cycle the fastest? Why?
42. In which natural ecosystem to nutrients cycle the slowest? Why?
43. What is the effect of loss of vegetation on nutrient cycling?
44. List some of the potential consequences of global warming:
45. Two processes that emerge at the ecosystem level of organization are energy flow
and chemical cycling. Develop a concept map that explains, compares, and
contrasts these 2 processes.
46. Describe four or five human intrusions in ecosystem dynamics that have
detrimental effects.
47. Give an example of how each of the following causes of the biodiversity crisis has
reduced population numbers or caused extinctions.
a.
habitat destruction
b. introduced species
c.
overexploitation
d. disruption of food chains
48. Is the effective population size usually larger or smaller than the actual number of
individuals in the population? Explain.
49. Explain the basic premise of the small population approach. What conservation
strategy is recommended for preserving small populations?
50. Describe the declining-population approach to the conservation of endangered
species.
51. What are some potential benefits of corridors? How may they be harmful?
52. What factors would favor the creation of larger, extensive preserves? What
factors favor smaller, unconnected preserves?
53. What are the major threats to biodiversity, listed in order of importance?
54. How does the loss of biodiversity threaten human welfare?
55. What do edges and movement corridors have to do with habitat fragmentation?