Download BIL 160 - Spring 1998 Krempels

BIL 160
Krempels
SAMPLE EXAM I
Choose the BEST answer for each multiple choice question. Two points each.
1. A group of similar organisms in which gene flow occurs naturally across generations is
defined
as a
a. deme
c. species
e. none of the above
b. population
d. genus
2. About how many species across all Kingdoms have been described and named by
biosystematists?
a. 100,000
c. 1 billion
e. a dozen or so
b. 1.5 million
d. 50 million
3. Which of the following might you be most likely to see as a detrimental effect of inbreeding?
a. A lower incidence of genetic disorders
b. Inability to breed with members of the same species
c. A higher incidence of heterozygous gene loci
d. Reduced resistance to pathogens in inbred members of the population
e. all of the above
4. Long after Francesco Redi demonstrated that maggots did not spontaneously evolve from
rotting
meat, whose invention resulted in a revisitation of the idea that living organisms can
spontaneously generate from inorganic matter?
a. Anton van Leewenhoek
c. Louis Pasteur
e. Alfred Wallace
b. Charles Lyell
d. Lazzaro Spallanzani
5. French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck theorized that
a. organisms evolve due to selective pressures from the environment
b. giraffes in the Galapagos have longer necks because they had to stretch for food
c. characteristics acquired during a creature’s lifetime can be passed on to offspring
d. “omne vivum e vivo”
e. all life comes from non-life
6. Charles Darwin was the only person in history to develop the theory of evolution by means of
natural selection.
a. true
b. false
c. how the heck should I know?
7. Which is the following statements is most accurate?
a. Organisms that are the fastest and strongest will win the battle of “survival of the fittest”
b. Species evolve structures they need to survive
c. Individuals that produce the most eggs and sperm have the highest evolutionary fitness
d. Organisms best pre-adapted for survival in a given environment will have the greatest
evolutionary fitness.
e. All of the above statements are equally accurate.
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8. The continents we know today as Australia, Africa and Antarctica were once part of a
southern
land mass (which broke from an original single land mass) known as
a. Gondwana
c. Arctica
e. Laurasia
b. Pangaea
d. Greenland
9. A vestigial organ or structure is one which
a. is analogous to another structure in an unrelated taxon
b. is a structure which is no longer of much use to the organism in which it occurs
c. is present in two related taxa because of a common ancestral source
d. is present in only one gender of a species
e. has never engaged in reproductive activity (e.g., “vestigial virgin”)
10. An example of the type of structure described in the previous question is
a. the fluke of a dolphin and hand of a human
d. appendix of a human
b. the cloven hoof of an antelope
e. mane of a male lion
c. the jointed legs of an ant and jointed leg of a bird
11. The little brown lizard on your back fence has scales that are actually part of its skin. The
little
brown bird about to eat the little brown lizard on your back fence has feathers that are part of
its
skin. If you were to follow the embryonic development of these two vertebrates inside the
egg,
you would be able to see that the embryonic tissues that become scales in the lizard are the
same as those that become feathers in the bird. Without comparing them to characteristics in
other species, you could say that the scales and feathers of lizard and bird are
a. synapomorphic
c. homoplastic
e. symplesiomorphic
b. analogous
d. homologous
12. When an arctic hare changes its white winter coat into a brown one for springtime, she is
exhibiting
a. adaptation
c. natural selection
e. none of the above
b. microevolution
d. macroevolution
13. Which of the following statements is TRUE of an organism undergoing embryogenesis?
a. If it is a protostome, its blastopore will become its anus
b. It changes from a more primitive species to a more advanced species as it develops
c. It actually passes through all the adult stages its species passed through during its
evolution
d. It may exhibit synapomorphies with species to which it is very distantly related
e. It may exhibit synapomorphies with species to which it is closely related.
14. Pepper moths in industrial areas of England are melanistic (black), whereas those living in
rural
areas are spotted. Kettlewell and his students demonstrated that this could be due to natural
selection by birds who could more easily locate moths on tree trunks that they did not match.
However, a team of American researchers demonstrated that pepper moth larvae exposed to
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industrial pollutants hatched out as black moths, even if their parents were spotted. Further,
this change to the black form was heritable to the new black moths' offspring. This
phenomenon of an acquired characteristic becoming heritable is known as
a. natural selection
c. apomorphism
e. Lamarckianism
b. embryogenesis
d. epigenesis
15. A species' evolutionary history is termed its
a. ontogeny
c. adaptation
b. epistotomy
d. biogeography
e. phylogeny
16. If the allele frequencies of a population change without rendering the members of that
population unable to reproduce with other populations of the same species, we say that
has
occurred.
a. adaptation
c. macroevolution
e. phylogenesis
b. microevolution
d. embryogenesis
17. The Red-legged Frog (Rana aurora) has a range that extends across the southern California
coastal ranges. Sub-populations of the frogs live in fast-moving streams and runoffs in
separate canyons, and there is little or no migration between the stream systems. A group of
frogs living in a particular
stream can be said to represent a
of the Rana
aurora
population at large.
a. subspecies
c. race
e. population
b. genus
d. deme
18. Cuvier's theory that large natural disasters wiped out large numbers of organisms on a
somewhat regular basis over geological time is known as his theory of
a. natural selection
c. catastrophism
e. stratification
b. uniformitarianism
d. epigenesis
Uh oh. Consider the following story to answer questions #19 - 23.
Against all odds, you have graduated from U.M. and become a biologist studying nocturnal
beetles in the pine forests of Idyllwild, California. And you know what Idyllwild is famous for,
don’t you? One night, as you root around, overturning rocks in your search for beetles, a bright
beam of light arcs down from the night sky and you find yourself gently levitated into a discshaped spacecraft.
As you are placed on the exam table for probing, you notice that the alien scientists have two
distinct color morphs. Some of them are pale lavender, and others are bright green. Feeling
pretty good from the anesthetics they have administered, you turn to face the head Alien Surgeon
and drawl sleepily, "Dude. Great colors!"
She answers telepathically in monotone (all aliens, of course, speak in robotic monotone), “I
see you have noticed our phenotypic dimorphism. The lavender exoskeleton is encoded by a
dominant allele (G) and the green exoskeleton by a recessive allele (g). Now close your oral
sphincter and roll over.”
Ha ha! The joke’s on her! While the Alien physicians do their physical on you, you do a quick
head count of the aliens. Of 100 individuals in the room you count 64 with lavender skin and 36
with green skin. You wake up on a cold rock in the mountains below with a crashing headache
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and the memory of those numbers firmly ensconced in your noggin. You return to your
university to write up your research experience with the Aliens, ensuring that you will never get
tenure anywhere in the universe.
Okay. Here goes. Assume that the 100 aliens you counted are the only individuals on the
ship,
19. What is the frequency of the dominant allele in this Alien population?
a. 0.16
c. 0.4
e. 0.8
b. 0.84
d. 0.6
20. How many of the lavender aliens are heterozygous at the exoskeleton pigment locus?
a. 36
c. 84
e. need more information to determine
b. 48
d. 16
And the story continues. Not having learned your lesson, you return to the same study site two
years later. Surprise! Your old alien pals are there to meet you, and since you were unwittingly
radio-tagged during your first visit, you are easily relocated and zinged you up to the ship for
some followup measurements.
But the joke’s on them again, haha! While they shave all your body hair and attach electrodes
to your tongue, you take a quick survey of the scene once more. You notice that all the green
females are attached at the top of the head to the green males, and that the green females are
attached to the green males. Through the cloud of opiates they have given you, you manage to
ask the attending surgeon, “Hey, what’s the deal with the head butts?”
The familiar telepathic monotone drones again, “How rude. It is impolite to observe the
copulation of another species. Now close your oral sphincter and roll over.” As she monitors
your vital functions, you scan around and notice that of the 1000 Aliens in the room (hey, it’s a
big ship and the aliens have been busy), there are now 190 lavender aliens and 810 green aliens.
21. What is the frequency of the recessive allele in the population?
a. 0.1
c. 0.9
e. 0.81
b. 0.01
d. 1.0
22. Which of the following is the most reasonable explanation for the change in allele
frequencies you have observed?
a. There is an environmental advantage to having a green exoskeleton on this particular ship.
b. A ship carrying a bunch of homozygous green aliens arrived in the past two years.
c. The gene pool of the first original 100 consisted of more recessive than dominant alleles
d. green aliens had more successful (i.e. productive) matings than lavender aliens did.
e. Any of the above explanations might explain the change in allele frequencies
23. It was obvious in the procreative frenzy you observed that lavender aliens prefer lavender
aliens as mates, and that green aliens prefer green aliens as mates. Without assuming that
this affects the fitness of either green or lavender aliens, this phenomenon is most precisely
described as
a. natural selection
c. assortative mating
e. Prom Night
b. sexual selection
d. Founder effect
24. The bottleneck effect results from
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a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
some genes being more advantageous to individuals than others
some alleles being gradually weeded out of a population due to selection
a few individuals are the only survivors of a large population after a disaster of some sort
animals and plants drifting onto islands by clinging to floating logs
all of the above
25. Which of the following is likely to result in a change in a population’s allele frequencies?
a. genetic drift
c. mutation
e. all of the above
b. sexual selection
d. immigration from another population
26. A population of garter snakes living on the leeward side of a large mountain has several
different phenotypes, including black with blue stripes, black with green stripes, yellow with
red stripes and yellow with black stripes. All of these individuals can interbreed to produce
fertile offspring, and each generation of baby snakes can be expected to exhibit the multiple
phenotypes of their parents. Such a population is said to be
a. subspecific
b. atypical
c. mutational
d. clinal
e. polymorphic
27. A population of parrots exhibits feather colors ranging from dark green to pale yellow. Most
individuals exhibit a medium green coloration. A new falcon predator species arrives on the
scene, with color vision that makes both the tasty dark green and the plump yellow parrots
very
conspicuous against their medium green foliage roosting sites. Within a few years, the entire
parrot population has shifted to the medium green coloration. What phenomenon has taken
place?
a. adaptive radiation
c. disruptive selection
e. stabilizing
selection
b. character displacement
d. directional selection
28. The evolutionary fitness a you gain by baby sitting your little bratty cousins (and slightly
reducing their chance of electrocution while their parents are away--unless they annoy you
too
much) is gained via
a. inclusive fitness
c. kin selection
e. capitalism
b. relative fitness
d. The Poison Control Center
29. Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE of honeybees?
a. worker bees share more alleles with their worker sisters than they would with their own
offspring (if they could have offspring)
b. a drone shares 100% of his alleles with his daughters
c. a worker bee’s fitness is due only to kin selection
d. a queen bee who produces only drones as offspring will probably have lower inclusive
fitness than a queen who produces both workers and drones
e. a worker bee who never produces offspring usually has an evolutionary fitness of zero.
30. An octopus is a protostome and a fish is a deuterostome. The two species share a very
distant
common ancestor that resembled nothing more than a gastrula with no sense organs at all.
Both
the octopus and the fish have a complex "camera" eye that forms an image with a lens that
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focuses light on a photoreceptor-rich retina. The morphological similarity between the eye of
the octopus and the fish is probably due to
a. common ancestry
c. homology of the eyes
e. interbreeding between
b. character displacement
d. similar selective pressure
octopus and fish
31. A species which is volant is less likely to undergo macroevolution than one which is
a. migratory
c. adaptive
e. none of the above
b. sedentary
d. wind dispersed
32. Conspecifics are members of the same
a. species
c. population
b. genus
d. deme
e. neighborhood
33. The early idea that life evolves from a primitive to an “ideal” form is known as
a. anthropogenesis
c. orthogenesis
e. gradualism
b. anthropomorphism
d. uniformitarianism
34. The evolutionary theory proposing that species undergo relatively sudden, major change and
then pass through periods of relatively unchanging stasis is known as
a. gradualism
c. cohesionism
e. punctuated equilibrium
b. catastrophism
d. selectionism
35. Which of the following is TRUE of continental drift?
a. It had no effect on the evolution of the living organisms on the various land masses.
b. It began to occur in the Pleistocene
c. It resulted in the convergence Gondwana and Laurasia into a single mass known as
Pangaea
d. It can be used to study the evolutionary relationships of extant groups of organisms.
e. More than one of the above is true of continental drift
36. The mass extinction of large mammals during the Pleistocene may have been due to
a. glaciation of the northern hemisphere
b. extremely effective hunting by humans
c. caused by the impact of a large meteor striking earth
d. caused by genetic drift
e. more than one of the above
Use the following phylogenetic tree diagram to answer questions #37 - 39.
turtles
mammals
snakes
lizards
W
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crocodilians
birds
V
X
Y
Z
37. Which of the following hypothetical ancestors is the most recent common ancestor of all
living
snakes, lizards, crocodilians and birds?
a. Ancestor V
c. Ancestor X
e. Ancestor Z
b. Ancestor W
d. Ancestor Y
38. According to the tree, birds and crocodilians share a more recent common ancestor than do
turtles and crocodilians.
a. true
b. false
c. cannot tell from information provided.
39. All mammals and all birds exhibit a character called homeothermy (commonly called "warm
bloodedness), the ability to regulate one's own body temperature internally. The deep-sea
Leatherback Turtle is unique among turtles in that it, too, appears to be homeothermic. The
most parsimonious analysis of the tree would suggest that homeothermy shown by birds,
mammals and Leatherbacks is probably
a. a synapomorphy
c. a symplesiomorphy
e. unique
b. a homoplasy
d. also present in ancestor Y
40. Generally speaking, a primitive character is not as well adapted to performing its task as is a
more derived character.
a. true
b. false
c. I'm falling asleep here.
Oh no. Another "thinking" session, courtesy of the marmosets and the honeybees. Use this
little story to answer questions #41 A fictional population of whiptail lizards living in the southwestern U.S. deserts has an
unusual reproductive mode. Males are diploid, and produce sperm via meiosis. Females can be
either diploid or haploid. If they are diploid, they produce eggs via meiosis. If haploid, they
produce eggs via mitosis.
Mating between the males and either diploid or haploid females produces normal, diploid
zygotes. Half of each baby lizard's genes come from the male parent and half come from the
female parent. Diploid female lizards produce eggs via meiosis.
When environmental conditions are stable, all females lay eggs without mating with males.
Each egg contains a haploid embryo, which will develop into a female. When environmental
conditions become harsh, all females mate with males to produce diploid zygotes which develop
into either diploid males or diploid females (depending on the sex chromosomes). These are not
social lizards, and there is no parental care of offspring by either male or female parent.
41. What percentage of her genes does a haploid mother lizard share with each of her offspring?
a. 25% b. 50%
c. 75%
d. 100%
e. not enough information given
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42. What percentage of her genes does a diploid mother lizard share with each of her offspring?
a. 25% b. 50%
c. 75%
d. 100%
e. not enough information given
43. Let's say environmental conditions are stable and dandy for the survival of all lizards.
However, one particular female (Wendy) chooses to mate with a diploid males and produce
diploid offspring anyway (just in the mood, I guess). On the average, she produces the same
number of fertile, viable offspring as her sisters who do not mate, though they produce only
haploid females as offspring. Which of the following statements is TRUE?
a. Wendy's individual fitness is lower than that of her non-mating haploid sisters.
b. Wendy can be said to be engaging in kin selection.
c. Wendy's inclusive fitness is higher than that of her haploid sisters.
d. Wendy's sisters are engaging in kin selection.
e. Wendy has higher self-esteem than the other haploid lizards.
44. Which of the following is NOT part of one of Charles Darwin's original four tenets of
evolution by means of natural selection?
a. Organisms of a given species have physical characteristics that are heritable
b. Resources for which conspecifics must compete are limited
c. Organisms have the potential to produce huge numbers of offspring
d. Individuals with the greatest (heritable) strength and speed will leave the most offspring
e. Organisms best suited to their environment leave the most offspring to the next generation
45. Before the mid 1600's, people generally believed that new types of organisms were
constantly being formed from the inorganic world around them via the process of
a. natural selection
c. spontaneous generation
e. introduction by space
b. epigenesis
d. spontaneous combustion
aliens
46. The microscope was invented by
a. Charles Lyell
b. Anton van Leeuwenhoek
c. Louis Pasteur
d. Francesco Redi
e. David Wilson
47. Evolutionary biologists who track speciation events by studying the geographic distribution
of
living organisms are
a. biosystematists
c. comparative geologists
e. nerds
b. taxonomists
d. biogeographers
48. Embryology is useful to the biologist studying evolutionary relationships because
a. distantly related taxa often exhibit synapomorphies
b. the more closely related two taxa are, the more persistent their developmental similarities
c. it allows one to track the extent of inbreeding in natural populations
d. fossilized embryos are plentiful and informative
e. after a long day of classifying, a cold beer and an embryo on a Ritz is just the ticket
49. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection implies that
a. only the fittest organisms survive
b. organisms engage in constant physical battles with each other to survive
c. organisms have only a limited capacity to produce offspring
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d. an organism which leaves behind more viable offspring than its competitors is more
evolutionarily fit than its competitors
e. the organism who dies with the most toys wins
50. Environmentally induced variation of a physical characteristic is
a. partially governed by genotype
b. partially governed by environmental conditions
c. completely controlled by environmental conditions
d. two of the above
e. none of the above
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Answer Key will be posted shortly after everyone has finished the exam and is milling excitedly
around the lobby. Please do not scratch each other's eyes out in trying to see the answers.
Scores should be ready by late Monday or early Tuesday. If you think there is an error on the
answer key, please email Dr. Krempels at [email protected]
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I don't think God put me on this planet to judge
others.
I think he put me on this planet to
gather specimens and take them back to my
home planet.
Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey
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