Intro

Question 1

What is the provincial flower and tree of Ontario?

Answer 1

White Trillium; Eastern White Pine

Question 2

Define biogeography

Answer 2

the study of the geographical distribution of organisms, their habitat (ecological biogeography), and the historical.biological factors which produced them (historical biogeography)

Question 3

Biogeography themes?

Answer 3

life forms: physical environment, geological communities, geological history and evolution, recent/future environmental change

Question 4

2 Biological hierarchies

Answer 4

1) Taxonomic, ecological, trophic

2) Species, association, community, biome

Question 5

Define ecological biogeography

Answer 5

examines the factors (mostly physical) that control the range/abundance of organisms

Question 6

Define resources

Answer 6

all things consumed by an organism, consumption decreases resource supply

Question 7

What do plants need? What do animals need?

Answer 7

Plants need: sunlight in the visible band, CO2 from the atmosphere, H2O from the soil, macro/micronutrients, and space to acquire resources

Animals need: O2 from the atmosphere, H2O from the environment, nutrient and energy sources from plants and other animals, and space to acquire resources

Question 8

Define taxonomy

Answer 8

the classification and naming of organisms

Question 9

Define systematics

Answer 9

includes the evolutionary relationships of organisms

Question 10

Define ecology

Answer 10

how organisms interact and are affected by their environment

Question 11

Define trophic

Answer 11

how energy flows in an ecological community

Question 12

Aristotle (384–322 BC )

Answer 12

formulated two classifications,
genos and eidos. Genos referred to broad categories of
animals, (e.g. reptiles), while eidos were animals in a
genos. Aristotle’s system was intentionally hierarchical
with mammals placed at the top of the hierarchy.
Aristotle’s ideas held sway in Europe until the 17th
century.

Question 13

John Ray (1627-1705)

Answer 13

introduced the term species,
which he defined (following plant and animal
breeders) as a group of organisms capable of
interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. His
taxonomy used multiple morphological characters to
classify species (e.g. flowers, seeds, fruits and roots
for plants)

Question 14

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)

Answer 14

formalized species descriptions based
on diagnostic traits, hierarchy based on groupings of
species and genera, not splitting of
larger classes, and Latin binomials (Genus, species) replace long Latin descriptions

Question 15

Explain intra-specific variation

Answer 15

domesticated plants and animals have varying appearance/size/etc.

Question 16

Merits of the biological species concept

Answer 16

1) Emphasizes importance of evolutionary descent
2) Emphasizes that species act as discrete breeding
groups - they breed “true to type”
3) Provides testable hypothesis - can they produce
viable offspring?

Question 17

Drawbacks of the biological species concept

Answer 17

1) Some organisms that are morphologically discrete can interbreed
2) We only have knowledge of a small portion of breeding species on earth
3) Impossible to apply to extinct species

Question 18

How can mitochondrial DNA be used to examine genetic similarity between organisms?

Answer 18

mtDNA indicates genetic similarity which can be used to establish an evolutionary time frame. It is passed from mother to offspring and if the mutation rate is known, ancestry can be established.A single gene is all that is required to do this since there are many copies per cell

Question 19

Define species

Answer 19

organisms that share at least one diagnostic
morphological trait; that can interbreed freely
under natural conditions, and whose direct
ancestors or descendants can be traced in the fossil
record