Download Ecology Exam Practice - Elmwood Park Memorial High School

Answer the following on a separate piece of paper.
You may work with a partner.
You may not look up the answers.
1. 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.
2. Invasive species, such as red fire ants, introduced into an ecosystem often threaten native
plants and animals.
a. Describe THREE different factors that contribute to the success of invasive
species in an ecosystem.
b. Discuss THREE ways that an invasive species can affect its new ecosystem.
3. Which of the following is true about secondary consumers in an ecosystem?
a. They eat only plants.
b. They are eaten by primary consumers.
c. They are smaller and weaker than are primary consumers.
d. They are fewer in number than are primary consumers.
e. They contain the greatest total biomass in the system.
4. Which of the following best explains why there are seldom more than five trophic levels
in a food chain?
a. Most carnivores function at more than one trophic level.
b. Trophic levels above this number contain too many individuals.
c. Top carnivores are too few in number to prey effectively.
d. The ecosystem contains too much biomass.
e. Energy is lost from each trophic level.
5. Behavioral ecology is the...
a. study of the behavior of animals, focusing on stimulus and response
b. application of human emotions and thoughts to other animals
c. study of animal cognition
d. study of animal behavior from an evolutionary perspective of fitness
e. behavioral study of ecology
6. Proximate causes
a. explain the evolutionary significance of a behavior
b. are immediate causes of behavior such as environmental stimuli
c. are environmental, whereas ultimate causes are genetic
d. are endogenous, although they may be set by exogenous cues
e. show that nature is more important than nurture
7. The behavior that maximizes an animal's energy intake-to expenditure ratio is called
a. optimal foraging
b. Hamilton's rule
c. a fixed-action pattern
d. cognition
e. learning
8. Which of the following descriptions is an example of a fixed-action pattern?
a. a crane in a captive-breeding program imprinting on its human caregiver
b. a male stickleback chasing a red-bellied object from its territory
c. a black cap migrating to its winter territory
d. a songbird learning its song after listening to a tape of its species' song
e. a digger wasp returning to its nest with the aid of landmarks
9. In operant conditioning.
a. an animal improves its performance of a fixed-action pattern
b. an animal learns as a result of associating a benefit or harm with an action
c. an animal learns a behavior by watching others
d. a bird can learn the song of a related species if it hears only that song
e. an irrelevant stimulus can elicit a response because of its association with a
normal stimulus
10. In an area with a heterogeneous distribution of suitable habitats, the dispersion pattern of
a population is probably
a. clumped
b. uniform
c. random
d. unpredictable
e. dense
11. Which of the following statements about life tables is not true?
a. They were first used by life insurance companies to estimate survival patterns
b. They show the age-specific death rate for a population
c. They are used to predict logistic growth
d. They can be used to construct survivorship curves
e. They are often constructed by following a cohort from birth to death
12. The human population is growing at such a fast rate because
a. the age structure of many countries is highly skewed toward younger ages
b. the death rate has greatly decreased since the Industrial Revolution
c. technology has increased Earth's carrying capacity
d. fertility rates in many developing country are above the 2.1 children per female
replacement level
e. all of the above are true
13. A cage containing male mosquitoes has a small earphone placed on top, through which
the sound of a female mosquito is played. All the males immediately fly to the earphone
and thrust their abdomens through the fabric of the cage. What is the best explanation for
this behavior?
a. The males learn to associate the sound with females.
b. Copulation is a fixed action pattern, and the female flight sound is a sign stimulus
that initiates it.
c. The sound from the earphone irritates the male mosquitoes, causing them to
attempt to sting it.
d. The reproductive drive is so strong that when males are deprived of females, they
will attempt to mate with anything that has even the slightest female
characteristic.
e. Through classical conditioning, the male mosquitoes have associated the
inappropriate stimulus from the earphone with the normal response of copulation.
14. Sow bugs become more active in dry areas and less active in humid areas. This is an
example of
a. taxis.
b. tropism.
c. net reflex.
d. cognition.
e. kinesis.
15. 7) 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. operant conditioning.
d. classical conditioning.
e. maturation.