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Bonine and Oh, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, spring 2009
EXAM FORMAT AND SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW (EXAM 3)
22 April 2009, Exam 3 will be in lecture on Monday 27 April
Please refer to your syllabus, text, readings, and lecture and discussion notes (and quizzes) for
information relevant to the third exam. Exam III will cover lectures from carbon dioxide transport
through feeding, digestion, and allometry. Don’t forget to review the material you covered in lab.
Likely Exam Format:
True or false and matching (~10 points)
Really Short Answer (one word or sentence) (~30 pts)
Short Answer (a couple of sentences) (~45 pts)
Longer Answer (a paragraph or more) (~15 pts)
Note that some of the short answer may involve drawing or interpreting graphs.
Jason Pilarski, Respiratory Control
1. Review your notes from this lecture. I will ask Kevin Oh to write questions for the exam from
this lecture that I did not attend.
Carbon Dioxide Transport (a leftover from material for the 2nd midterm)
2. How is most carbon dioxide transported in vertebrate blood? Is the answer different in
different taxa or between endotherms and ectotherms?
3. What is the Haldane Effect? How is it similar or different than the Bohr Effect?
4. What is the role of carbonic anhydrase in carbon dioxide transport? What is the role of
hemoglobin in carbon dioxide transport?
5. Why and where is there a chloride shift?
Circulation, Heart Function
6. What are four important components of the circulatory system in vertebrates? Why are
tissues arranged in parallel instead of in series?
7. How does gravity affect blood pressure? Is the effect different for aquatic organisms?
8. Compare circulatory systems in terrestrial mammals, marine fishes, and air breathing fishes.
9. How is the arterial system a “pressure reservoir” whereas the venous system is a “volume
reservoir”?
10. Trace a drop of blood from the right atrium through the heart, lungs, and body until it returns
to the right atrium. What if you traced a glucose molecule? Where are some of the places it
might end up? How might it have been temporarily in the forming urine?
11. How are amphibian and reptile hearts distinct from each other and from mammalian hearts?
12. How is the “three-chambered” description of the reptilian heart overly simplistic?
13. Explain a situation where a right-to-left cardiac shunt would be adaptive.
14. Do mammalian or avian fetuses have shunt equivalents? Why? How? Do things change after
birth/hatching?
15. How is the heart an electric machine?
16. How and why do cardiac muscle action potentials have long plateau periods? Think about
both proximate and ultimate explanations.
17. How and why can cardiac cells exhibit intrinsic pacemaker potential?
18. Why does the SA node set the pace of your heart? How can it be modified?
19. Compare cardiac muscle contractile function with skeletal and smooth muscle.
20. Understand and be able to explain the Wiggers Diagram. How is an electrocardiogram
related?
21. What is the atrial kick? What is the Frank-Starling mechanism? Do you need either to
survive?
Bonine and Oh, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, spring 2009
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How can cardiac output be measured? How can cardiac output change? Why does stroke
volume not change very much even if diastole is cut in half?
Does the sympathetic nervous system recruit more cardiac muscle fibers to increase cardiac
output?
Compare properties of the venous system and the arterial system.
How can endothelium in capillaries vary in different tissue types? What is the functional
significance of this variation?
Explain the role of bulk flow and osmotic gradients in the functioning of capillaries and the role
of the lymph system.
What is ANP?
Compare extrinisc and intrinsic control of arterioles in the circulatory system. Are there
exceptions to these general rules?
How are Viagra, NO, cGMP, and vasodilation related?
How do you calculate flow rate in a vessel? Is this equation always correct for vertebrate
vessels? What is the relative effect of a change in vessel diameter?
Diving by Marine Mammals
31. What are the challenges imposed on marine mammals that dive in the ocean to forage?
32. Describe three ways these challenges are met physiologically.
33. Explain ‘the bends’.
34. What is the pressure on an organism at 100m below sea level?
35. How do marine mammals deal with their (potential?) oxygen deficit when under water?
Osmoregulation & Kidney Function
36. Why can’t we get hydrated by drinking seawater?
37. What are five obligatory osmotic exchanges between a vertebrate and its environment?
38. What are typical values of blood osmolarity in terrestrial vertebrates? What osmolarity is sea
water? Fresh water?
39. What energy source do kidneys, gills, and salt glands rely on for their function? What protein
typically burns this energy during osmoregulation? Where do chloride cells fit into this
discussion?
40. How does body size relate to water balance? Why?
41. How is metabolic water produced?
42. How does behavior mitigate environmental challenges to physiological systems? Can you
provide an example?
43. How do frogs and lizards compare with respect to cutaneous water-loss rates? Are there
exceptions?
44. How can sharks be hyperosmotic with respect to seawater, but have very different ion
concentrations than sea water?
45. What is the ‘job’ of the mammalian kidney? Is this different from the role of the kidney in other
vertebrate groups?
46. What is the functional unit of the kidney? How does the anatomy of the kidney and its
constituent components contribute to its functional properties?
47. Which three processes in the kidney determine the final, excreted urine composition?
48. What does the U/P ratio tell you?
49. How is filtration regulated both before and at the Bowman’s Capsule?
50. Why does starvation in humans or other vertebrates influence rates of filtration and urine
production?
51. Explain how the macula densa cells and the juxtaglomerular cells influence kidney function?
How is anatomy finely linked to function for the juxtaglomerular apparatus?
52. Explain the role of renin on the circulatory system. How and why does the lung get involved?
53. How is glomerular filtration rate (GFR) changed if a substance is both filtered and secreted
into the forming urine?
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Explain the mechanism by which a person might have glucose in their urine? Why do we not
typically have glucose in our urine? You could answer the question from a proximate and from
an ultimate point of view.
What are the substances most commonly reabsorbed in the proximal tubule? How?
What happens in the distal tubule?
How do aldosterone and vasopressin (ADH) work together to maintain fluid volume in the
body?
How are the loop of Henle and collecting duct each involved in creating and maintaining the
osmotic gradient that becomes more osmotic in the medial part of the kidney medulla?
How does counter-current exchange in the vasa recta facilitate the osmotic gradient in the
medulla?
What three hormones does ANP help inhibit?
Explain how the countercurrent multiplier in the kidney works.
How can vertebrates pee out urine that is either hypo or hyper osmotic to plasma? Why is this
important?
Explain how salt excretion from organs other than kidneys typically works.
How are chloride cells involved in fish osmoregulation? What hormones are typically involved,
especially in anadromous fishes?
How is nitrogenous waste dealt with in different vertebrate groups? How could you argue
these differences are adaptive?
What is the relationship between length of loops of Henle, arid habitat, and urine osmolarity?
Bird Osmoregulation, Eldon Braun
67. What constitutes the internal environment of a vertebrate?
68. In the context of osmoregulation, why are mammals unusual?
69. What organs do birds use for osmoregulation?
70. Why do birds not have concentrated ureteral urine?
71. Why is comparison of U/P ratios between birds and mammals not that informative?
72. How much different is bird GFR from mammal GFR?
73. How much more soluble is urea than uric acid?
74. Why is there a lot of protein in bird urine? What happens to that protein? Where?
75. What is meant by the term “retrograde peristalsis”?
76. How much of the nitrogen in bird uric acid is excreted?
77. Why did Braun argue that birds are perhaps better adapted to desert living than similar-sized
mammals?
78. What is a typical value of blood-glucose concentration in a human? In a dove?
79. Why do birds roost in places like saguaro cavities?
Feeding, Digestion, Metabolism, Allometry
80. Describe three categories of feeding? How is morphology correlated?
81. Why does beak-size fluctuate in Darwin’s finches?
82. How is homodont dentition different from heterodont?
83. How did Joe Slowinski die?
84. What is the role of a pit organ in snakes? How precise is the sense?
85. Describe three variations on suction feeding.
86. Explain the proximate (current anatomy) and ultimate (pressure of natural selection)
mechanisms behind projectile feeding in some lungless salamanders.
87. Why would you ever put glasses on a chameleon?
88. Compare the digestive physiology of herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores.
89. What are the different parts of the digestive tract? What happens in each of them?
90. Describe the roles of three secretions from the foregut.
91. How are monogastric and digastric anatomies different?
92. What happens in a cow’s stomach? How much gas does a domestic cow produce each
minute? Why does this concern Al Gore?
Bonine and Oh, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, spring 2009
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What separates the foregut from the midgut? What are the parts of the midgut? What
happens in each of them? Where are most bile and pancreatic enzymes delivered to the
midgut?
Where are the mucosa and submucosa? How are smooth muscles arranged in the digestive
tract? Why?
Describe the anatomical specializations related to villi and microvilli. What does the
glycocalyx do?
What commonly is the job of the hindgut? Why do rabbits often eat their feces? Do cows do
something similar? Why don’t rabbits do what cows do?
How do various substances get absorbed into the blood from the chyme? How are amino
acids absorbed? Fats? How is the lacteal involved? What is the role of the hepatic portal
vein?
What percent of the water and electrolytes secreted into the lumen of the gut are reabsorbed
before defecation? Where? Why?
Why is there a countercurrent arrangement of arterioles and venules (and even capillaries) in
the tips of the villi, and a high concentration of Na+ at the tips of the villi?
Describe important secretions of the headgut, foregut, and midgut. Where are most midgut
secretions made? What do they do?
Why is vertebrate feces brown?
Explain how gastrin, GIP, and the enterogastric reflex are related to both digestive physiology
and homeostasis?
What is a pre-enzyme? Why does the vertebrate gut bother making a pre-enzyme?
Is the digestive system disconnected from the brain? Why or why not?
Give an example of a lipid soluble vitamin that plays an important role in vision.
Why might digestive transit time differ between individuals or between meals?
Explain the fitness (Darwinian) implications of gut plasticity.
What is the alkaline tide and why does it occur?
How do anabolic and catabolic metabolism differ? What is the end product of most of the
ingested food in a mouse? How does this inform our understanding of trophic pyramids?
Define and explain SDA. How was SDA studied in your lab exercise with the mice and frogs?
What does it mean to be K-selected or r-selected?
Explain an example of indirect costs of parental care.
Why are there few aquatic homeothermic endotherms?
Compare FMR to BMR? Which is easier to measure? Why?
Define allometry.
a. Explain the implications of the mouse-to-elephant curve.
b. How do you linearize a power function?
c. Why is isometry rare?
d. How does skeleton mass scale with body mass? Why?
e. How does cost of locomotion scale with body mass?
f. How do the efficiencies of different locomotor modes generally vary? Are there
interesting exceptions?
g. How much LSD should you give an elephant? What are the several ways you
could answer this question? Which do you think is the most accurate? Why?
h. How do components of gas-exchange physiology scale with body size?
Review Questions from Lab/Discussion:
1. What is the main point of each article we have read thus far in lab? Review the questions that
Kevin Oh emailed you about each week’s readings.
2. What questions did you address in each of your hands-on labs? What write-up questions
were you asked to answer about your findings?
3. What topics were discussed several times, perhaps even in multiple lab meetings?
4. How is metabolism actually measured? What are the units commonly used?
Bonine and Oh, Vertebrate Physiology, ECOL 437, spring 2009