Bonine and Pasch, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, Fall 2003
EXAM FORMAT AND SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW (EXAM TWO: 21 October 2003)
* This list of questions is not exhaustive, but should give you an idea as to the range of material and types
of questions we are likely to present on the exam. Please refer to your syllabus, text, readings, and lecture
and discussion notes for information relevant to the second exam. The exam will cover Chapters 9-11, as
well as readings and material from related discussion sessions.
Likely Exam Format:
True or false and matching (~10 points)
Really Short Answer (one word or sentence) (~25 pts)
Short Answer (a couple of sentences) (~45 pts)
Longer Answer (a paragraph or more) (~20 pts)
Endocrine System:
1. How is the activity of a neurotransmitter in a synapse different than the activity of a hormone?
2. Distinguish between the terms autocrine and exocrine.
3. How are release of hormones and neurotransmitters functionally similar?
4. What is ‘primary fluid’?
5. What is one reason that hormones have been historically difficult to study?
6. Is testosterone an amine hormone or a steroid hormone?
7. What is a neurohormone?
8. What is the functional relationship between the hypothalamus and the pituitary?
9. Give an example of a hormone released from the anterior pituitary.
10. From the posterior pituitary?
11. How can ADH be considered an example of a group of highly conserved proteins?
12. Discuss the differences in mechanism of activity between lipid soluble and lipid insoluble hormones.
13. How can hormone reception at the cell surface be functionally amplified inside the cell?
14. Give two examples of common 2nd messenger systems used in intracellular signalling.
15. Please give two examples of negative feedback systems discussed in class.
16. Define ‘kinase’.
17. How could the same hormone have opposite effects on different cells?
18. What are some of the intermediate steps between binding of glucagon at a liver cell and the resultant
increase in blood glucose concentration?
19. How is the adrenal gland actually two glands? What are some of the hormones it releases?
20. Give examples of 1) a catecholamine, 2) a catecholamine receptor, and 3) a response to a
catecholamine.
21. What hormone most directly influenced the abnormal features displayed by Andre the Giant?
22. Briefly describe how insulin activity is altered in Type I and Type II Diabetes.
23. How does abuse of exogenous testosterone by weightlifters reduce their sperm count?
24. Where does spermatogenesis occur?
25. What roles do FSH and LH play in ovulation?
26. How do birth control pills work?
27. How does RU486 terminate pregnancy?
28. Late in the luteal phase, what helps maintain the corpus luteum in the event of egg fertilization?
Muscle:
29. What are the two major types of muscle?
30. How is calcium involved in skeletal muscle contraction?
31. How does calcium regulation differ in smooth muscle?
32. What are the two most obvious short-term uses of ATP in muscular contraction?
33. Why are skeletal muscle fibers multinucleate?
34. What are the different components of the sarcomere?
35. Does the A-band become shorter during sarcomere shortening?
36. What does it mean that alpha-motor neurons are always excitatory?
Bonine and Pasch, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, Fall 2003
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Describe the steps in cross-bridge cycling.
For skeletal muscle, define and describe excitation-contraction coupling, including intermediate steps
and structures.
What is the length-tension relationship?
Where on the length-tension curve does skeletal muscle in the body generally operate?
If you were to draw curves of 1) change in membrane potential, 2) change in intracellular free-calcium
concentration, and 3) change in force production, all over time, what is the order in which those curves
would appear?
How might the curves change if we were talking about smooth muscle instead of skeletal?
What is calsequestrin?
Describe three differences between fiber types I, IIa, and IIb.
What are three sources of ATP for muscular contraction?
What can you measure with 31P-Magnetic-Resonance Spectroscopy?
What does measurement of these different parameters allow you to say about the sustainability of
muscular activity in the sampled muscle?
Define ‘Maximum Aerobic Speed’.
Why might you expect that a given muscle would be better for either speed or endurance, but not both?
Why might this trade-off not be evident at the level of the whole organism?
How might muscle fatigue and inorganic phosphate concentration be mechanistically linked?
List a couple of potential benefits of intermittent locomotion?
What are two ways to control force production in a skeletal muscle?
Distinguish between isometric and isotonic force production in skeletal muscle.
Draw the force-velocity curve for a skeletal muscle. How is this related to Power?
Does a muscle develop the most power at the highest muscle shortening velocity?
Draw a positive work loop for a muscle.
What are the three things you need to measure in order to construct a work loop?
What are the two kinds of cardiac muscle?
What are three differences between cardiac and skeletal muscle?
What are three differences between smooth and skeletal muscle?
What is unique about the latch state of smooth muscle?
How are smooth muscle cells of single-unit smooth different from those of multi-unit smooth muscle?
Behavior Initiation:
64. Describe how the stretch receptor works to initiate the patellar tendon kick reflex. Include discussion of
appropriate neurons, synapses, antagonistic muscles, etc.
65. What is the ‘Law of Specific Nerve Energy’?
66. Describe how lateral inhibition works.
67. What are the different cell types as you move from photoreceptors to the mammalian brain? Be sure to
include the cell types most important for lateral interactions.
68. Is all the neuronal processing of visual input occurring in the brain?
69. In the fovea, do you get more or less convergence and divergence of photoreceptor input as compared
to areas in the retina that are more peripheral?
70. What are the two parts of a visual receptive field?
71. How are an on-center ganglion and an off-center ganglion different?
72. In the discussion of visual receptive fields, how are simple cells and complex cells different?
73. List two interesting physiological facts related to bat echolocation.
74. What role do magnetite particles play in navigation?
75. In songbirds, how has endocrine control of song learning been studied?
More Questions From Lab:
Bonine and Pasch, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, Fall 2003
1. How is an increase in corticosterone levels of male side-blotched lizards (U. stansburiana)
considered adaptive?
2. Wingfield et al. state “there are at least 5 ways in which hormone physiology can
contribute to conservation issues”. Please describe 3 approaches.
3. List both rapid (short-term) and chronic (long-term) effects of corticosterone during a
“stress” response.
4. What are three take-home messages from the Miyazawa et al. paper that reiterate issues
already discussed in class?
5. Describe a few explanations for the discrepancy in results found between whole-animal
and isolated whole-muscle performance in Xenopus laevis.
6. What is the function of CPG’s? Please list 2 examples.
7. Explain energy recovery in the context of flying insects, hummingbirds, or bats.
Good luck!