AP Biology Review
Chapters 43-47 Review Questions
Chapter 43: Behavioral Ecology
1. Understand the four different experiments that led to the understanding that behavior has a genetic
basis and how much behavior is environmental verses genetics.
2. Which two organ systems are most involved in physiological responses that lead to behavior?
3. What are fixed action patterns?
4. Understand how learning takes place (classical vs. operant conditioning, imprinting, song learning in
birds, etc)
5. What are sexual selection and sexual dimorphism?
6. What are the benefits of male competition? What are some of the drawbacks? What is territoriality?
7. How do different species communicate with each other? (Chemical, auditory, visual, tactile, etc).
8. Which method of communication is the fastest and does not require light?
9. Define sociobiology. Distinguish between altruism and self-interest.
10. Are organisms ever truly altruistic? What might their motivations be if they exhibit altruistic behavior?
Chapter 44: Population Ecology
1. Understand the organization of life on earth from an organism all the way to the biosphere.
2. Know what population density and distribution are and the different types of distribution patterns.
3. What items are measured to determine the growth rate of a population?
4. What is the difference between exponential growth and logistic growth? What is the carrying
capacity? What determines the carrying capacity of an environment?
5. Understand and be able to identify density-independent limiting factors and density-dependent
limiting factors.
6. Be able to explain mortality patterns and survivorship curves (by #) and age structure diagrams.
7. What are the differences between r-selection and K-selection?
8. What do the initials MDC and LDC stand for?
9. When did exponential growth begin for humans? What is the expected human population in 2050?
10. What are some ways human population growth can/will impact the environment?
Chapter 45: Community and Ecosystem Ecology
1. How is community composition decided? On what two factors does community diversity depend?
2. Relate the latitude and size of a geographical area to its community composition and diversity.
3. What is the habitat and niche of an organism? What is the difference between fundamental niche and
realized niche?
4. Explain the competitive exclusion principle and how resource partitioning affects competition.
5. Describe the relationship between predator populations and prey populations.
6. What kinds of defenses have organisms developed to protect themselves from predators? What is the
difference between Mullerian and Batesian mimicry?
7. What are the three symbiotic relationships? Give examples of all three.
8. What are the types of succession? What are pioneer species? What is a climax community?
9. How is community stability measured? What does the intermediate disturbance hypothesis state?
10. Explain the importance of biodiversity and keystone predators.
11. What are the biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere? How are they connected?
12. What are the four levels of the atmosphere? Where is the ozone layer found?
13. What are autotrophs and heterotrophs, and how do they interact in an ecosystem?
14. What is the difference between detrital and grazing food webs? What are trophic levels?
15. How do the Laws of Thermodynamics explain how energy is cycled through an ecosystem? What is
the 10% rule regarding energy flow in a food web?
16. What are the different kinds of ecological pyramids, and what do they show us?
17. How do water, nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus cycle through an ecosystem?
18. What are the differences among nitrogen fixation, nitrification, and denitrification? What type of
organism performs these functions?
19. What are the greenhouse effect and thermal inversion? Which gas contributes to global warming?
What is meant by “ozone shield depletion?”
20. What is eutrophication and biological magnification?
Chapter 46: Major Ecosystems of the Biosphere
1. What is climate? What affects climate?
2. Know the different types of terrestrial biomes and characteristics of each one.
3. What are epiphytes? What are the major characteristics of the soil in tropical rain forests?
4. Be able to distinguish between shrublands, grasslands, and savannas.
5. What are the two main types of aquatic communities? What are the two kinds of lakes?
6. What is primary productivity? What is the difference between net and gross primary productivity?
7. What organisms, in both fresh and salt water, ware usually found at the bottom of the food chain?
What is the difference between phytoplankton and zooplankton?
8. What are the life zones of a lake or pond?
9. What is an estuary and what are its major characteristics?
10. What are the pelagic and benthic divisions of the ocean?
Chapter 47: Conservation of Biodiversity
1. What ethical principles does conservation biology support?
2. What is biodiversity and how is it determined?
3. What are the different values of biodiversity?
4. What is meant by a “biodiversity hotspot?
5. What can cause extinction of species?
6. What is a keystone species?
7. What are some conservation techniques?
2000 Question 4
To survive, organisms must be capable of avoiding, and/or defending against, various types of environmental
threats. Respond to each of the following.
a) Describe how adaptive coloration, mimicry, or behavior function as animal defenses against predation.
Include two examples in your answer.
b) Describe how bacteria or plants protect themselves against environmental threats. Include two examples
in your answer.
2002 Question 2
The activities of organisms change at regular time intervals. These changes are called biosocial rhythms. The graph
depicts the activity cycle over a 48-hour period for a fictional group of mammals called pointy-eared bombast,
found on an isolated island in the temperate zone.
a) Describe the cycle of activity for the bombast. Discuss how three of the following factors might affect the
physiology and/or behavior of the bombast to result in this pattern of activity.
 Temperature
 Food availability
 Presence of predators
 Social behavior
b) Propose a hypothesis regarding the effect of light on the cycle of activity in bombast. Describe a
controlled experiment that could be performed to test this hypothesis, and the results you would expect.
2003 Question 3
Many populations exhibit the following growth curve:
a) Describe what is occurring in the population during phase A.
b) Discuss three factors that might cause the fluctuations shown in phase B.
c) Organisms demonstrate exponential (r) or logistic (K) reproductive strategies. Explain these two strategies
and discuss how they affect population size over time.
2005 Form B Question 1
Survival of organisms depends on adaptive behavior and species interactions.
a) Behaviors of organisms may be influenced by environmental factors. Select two of the following types of
behaviors. For each type, explain
 How the environment affects the behavior, and
 Why this behavior increases the survivorship of individuals of a species.
i.
taxis/kinesis
ii.
migration
iii.
courtship
b) Interactions among populations may have an effect on densities of the species that interact. Predation
represents an important interaction among populations. The curves below depict the population densities
of three species: a small herbivore, a larger herbivore, and a carnivore. Identify which curve represents
which of the species listed, and justify your answer by describing the changes in the population densities
of these three species over time.
2006 Question 2
According to fossil records and recent published observations, two species of leaf-eating beetles (species A and B)
have existed on an isolated island in the Pacific Ocean for over 100,000 years. In 1964 a third species of leaf-eating
beetle (species C) was accidentally introduced on the island. The population size of each species has been
regularly monitored as shown in the graph.
a) Propose an explanation for the pattern of population density observed in species C.
b) Describe the effect that the introduction of beetle species C has had on the population density of species
A and species B. Propose an explanation for the patterns of population density observed in species A and
species B.
c) Predict the population density of species C in 2014. Provide a biological explanation for your prediction.
d) Explain why invasive species are often successful in colonizing new habitats.
2006 Form B Question 4
In many ways, all organisms in a food web can be said to be solar-powered. The producer level of the food web is
responsible for the transformation of the solar energy into a form that can be used by other living organisms.
a) Discuss the role of green plants in transforming the Sun’s energy into a form that can ultimately be used
by heterotrophs.
b) Discuss the flow of energy from producers through top carnivores in a food web in terms of the laws of
thermodynamics.
2007 Question 3
Compared with other terrestrial biomes, deserts have extremely low productivity.
a) Discuss how temperature, soil composition, and annual precipitation limit productivity in deserts.
b) Describe a four-organism food chain that might characterize a desert community, and identify the trophic
level of each organism.
c) Describe the results depicted in the graph. Explain one anatomical difference and one physiological
difference between species A and B that account for the CO2 uptake patterns shown. Discuss the
evolutionary significance of each difference. (This is not do-able until after photosynthesis!)
2007 Form B Question 1
Without adaptive behaviors, animals would not survive.
a) Describe what innate and learned behaviors are. Explain the adaptive value of each of these two
categories of behavior to an individual animal.
b) During mating season, male snakes exhibit tracking behavior when they follow chemical pheromone trails
deposited on the ground by females. Design a controlled experiment to determine whether a male garter
snake will track only a female of his species or will also follow the female of a related species.
2007 Form B Question 4
The energy flow in ecosystems is based on the primary productivity of autotrophs.
a) Discuss the energy flow through an ecosystem and the relative efficiency with which it occurs.
b) Discuss the impact of the following on energy flow on a global scale.
 Deforestation
 Global climate change
2008 Question 2
Consumers in aquatic ecosystems depend on producers for nutrition.
a) Explain the difference between gross and net primary productivity.
b) Describe a method to determine net and gross primary productivity in a freshwater pond over a 24-hour
evidence.
c) In an experiment, net primary productivity was measured, in the early spring, for water samples taken
from different depths of a freshwater pond in a temperate deciduous forest.
d) Explain the data presented by the graph, including a description of the relative rates of metabolic
processes occurring at different depths of the pond.
e) Describe how the relationship between the net primary productivity and depth would be expected to
differ if new data were collected in mid-summer from the same pond. Explain your prediction.
2008 Form B Question 1
Measurements of dissolved oxygen (DO) are used to determine primary productivity in bodies of water.
a) Explain the relationship of dissolved oxygen to primary productivity.
b) How would the predicted levels of DO differ in each of the following pairs of water sample? Provide
support for your prediction. Be sure to include a discussion of net productivity and gross productivity in
your answer.
I. Pond water at 25oC vs. pond water at 15oC.
II. Pond water placed in the dark for 24 hours vs. pond water placed in light for 24 hours.
2010 Question 4
The diagram below shows the succession of communities from annual plants to hardwood trees in a specific area
for a period of time.
a) Discuss the expected changes in biodiversity as the stages of succession progress as shown in the diagram
below.
b) Describe and explain three changes in abiotic conditions over time that lead to the succession, as shown
in the diagram below.
c) For each of the following disturbances, discuss the immediate and long-term effects on ecosystem
succession.
1. A volcano erupts, covering a 10-square-kilometer portion of a mature forest with lava.
2. A 10-square-kilometer portion of a mature forest is clear-cut.
2010 Form B Question 4
On a trip to a dense forest, a biologist noticed that millipedes (small invertebrates) were plentiful under logs but
were rarely seen in any other location.
a) Propose three environmental variables (two abiotic and one biotic) that would explain why millipedes are
found more frequently under logs.
b) For one of the abiotic environmental variables you chose above, design a controlled experiment to test a
hypothesis that this factor affects the distribution of millipedes on the forest floor. Describe the data that
would support your hypothesis.
c) Suppose that you were examining the distribution of a plant, instead of the millipede. Describe
modifications in the experiment that you designed in (b) that would be required to determine whether
the abiotic factor you chose affects the distribution of the plant.
2013 Question 4
Matter continuously cycles through an ecosystem. A simplified carbon cycle is depicted below.
a) Identify the key metabolic process for step I and the key metabolic process for step II, and briefly
explain how each process promotes movement of carbon through the cycle. For each process, your
explanation should focus on the role of energy in the movement of carbon.
b) Identify an organism that carries out both processes.
2014 Question 3
As part of a new suburban development, a sports complex consisting of athletic fields and buildings is constructed
in a formerly wooded area.
a) Predict one ecological consequence on the local plant community that is likely to result during the site
preparation and construction of the sports complex. Justify your prediction.
b) To maintain the playing fields, large quantities of water and chemicals are applied regularly to the
grass-covered areas. Predict one effect on the local animal community that might result from regular
use and maintenance of the playing fields. Justify your prediction
2014 Question 5
Genetically modified crops have been developed that produce a protein that makes the plants resistant to insect
pests. Other genetic modifications make the crops more resistant to chemicals that kill plants (herbicides).
a. Describe TWO potential biological risks of large-scale cultivation and use of such genetically modified
plants.
b. For each of the risks you described in part (a), propose a practical approach for reducing the risk.