Download In addition to these major ideas also study definitions of words that

In addition to these major ideas also study definitions of words that are underlined in notes, or in red on
lecture slides.
Major ideas:
Lecture 1
1) Understand why the mystery of the deformed frogs is an important “Case study” for ecology.
What aspects of ecology does it illustrate?
2) Be able to give a definition of ecology.
3) Know the different levels of ecological organization that we will study.
4) Be able to know the three major qualities of ecology that we discussed in class.
Lecture 2
1) Be able to trace where solar radiation goes.
2) What are the two major components of climate?
3) Why are the tropics hotter than other parts of the globe?
4) Why are there seasons far away from the equator?
5) What is El Nino and how does it affect the world’s climate?
6) Be able to describe 7 terrestrial biomes and 5 aquatic ones.
Lecture 3
1) What is meant by the range of an organism?
2) Compare arctic and desert plants in their characteristics and how they obtain or get rid of heat.
3) Explain why ectotherms are generally small, and endotherms large.
4) Compare and contrast saltwater and freshwater fish in how they balance the salinity of their
internal fluids.
5) What is meant by a heterotrophic and an autotrophic organism and what kinds of these groups
are there (for example, chemoautotrophs, photoautotrophs)?
6) Under what conditions is C4 photosynthesis favored, and what is meant by saying it is an
example of “convergent evolution”?
7) Know the three stages that heterotrophs process food: finding food, capturing it, and digesting
it. What adaptations do animals have for poor quality food such as plants?
Lecture 4
1) Be able to define evolution on short and long timescales. Contrast the evidence for evolution
with that for creationism.
2) Be able to write down all the steps of natural selection. Using the Darwin finch or sheep
examples, give an example of the evidence that each step has occurred. What is an adaptation?
3) Be able to define the four evolutionary forces we talked about (natural selection, mutation,
genetic drift and gene flow) and discuss how each contributes to evolution.
4) What is speciation and how does that occur? Be able to read a phylogenetic tree (where is a
speciation event? Where is an extinction event?).
5) Be able to describe several characteristics of “r strategy species” and how these are adaptations
to certain kinds of environments. Contrast to “K” species.
Lecture 5
1) Explain how all behaviors are on a continuum between completely innate and completely
learned.
2) What is meant by an “optimal” behavior, like “optimal foraging ecology”?
3) Contract sexual selection to natural selection. If one sex (usually males) does not contribute to
parental behavior, what does the other sex stand to gain by choosing a good-quality male?
4) Why is “altruism” a particular problem for natural selection? And how is kin selection an
explanation for why animals help each other in nature?
5) Be able to calculate r for a diploid organism and a haploid-diploid organism. Why does kin
selection explain eusociality in the Hymenoptera (ants, wasps, bees)?
Lecture 6
1) Describe the three major ways of estimating population abundance we described in class and be
able to solve a mark-recapture problem similar to slide 14.
2) Be able to predict population size in the future using a life table.
3) Know the exponential growth equation and be able to solve for problems similar to slides 32-35.
Know how the population grows for different values of λ and r.
4) Know the logistic growth equation, understand how N will change depending on its relative size
to K in this equation, and understand when dN/dt (change in population size = population
growth) is highest. Know the assumptions of logistic growth.
5) Be able to explain several types of density dependent mechanisms that limit growth in natural
populations.
Lecture 7
1) Why would a time lag of density dependence lead to oscillations in populations?
2) Explain several factors as to why small populations are more likely to go extinct.
3) Why is it important that in Levin’s model of metapopulations when e/c is > 1, the whole
population will go extinct? Know what e and c stand for how habitat fragmentation affects them.
4) Know what is meant by a niche, and explain the idea of “competitive exclusion” principle. How
did Gauss’ experiments demonstrate this idea?
5) Describe one of the experiments we discussed in class that demonstrated competition was an
important factor in regulating a population.
Some themes that we can touched on repeatedly:
1) Contrast an experiment to an observational study. Why is an experiment better able to show
cause-and-effect? What is a control, and why is it important to the experiment?
2) A “trade-off” describes a situation where there are two strategies and each has its good point,
but also its bad points. In reviewing for the test, think of a few examples of trade-offs that we
have encountered.
3) Why do ‘r’ and ‘K’ strategists have the names they have?