Population And Community Ecology Flashcards
Which of the following studies would shed light on the mechanism of spread of H5N1 from Asia?
A. Perform cloacal or saliva smears of migrating waterfowl to monitor whether any infected birds show up in Alaska.
B. Test faecal samples for H5N1 in Asian waterfowl that live near domestic poultry farms.
C. Test domestic chickens and ducks worldwide after they have been slaughtered for human consumption for the presence of H5N1.
D. Locate and destroy birds infected with H5N1 in Asian open-air poultry markets.
E. Keep domestic and wild fowl from interacting with each other to minimize the
probability that wild fowl could get infected and migrate out of Asia.
A.
Zoonotic disease
A. describes sub-organismal pathogens such as viruses, viroids, and prions.
B. is caused by pathogens that are transferred from other animals to humans by
direct contact or by means of a vector.
C. can only be spread from animals to humans through direct contact.
D. can only be transferred from animals to humans by means of an intermediate
host.
E. is too specific to study at the community level, and studies of zoonotic pathogens
are relegated to organismal biology.
B.
Which of the following is considered by ecologists a measure of the ability of a community either to resist change or to recover to its original state after change?
A. stability.
B. succession.
C. partitioning.
D. productivity.
E. competitive exclusion.
A.
Biomanipulation can best be described as
A. removing many of the next higher trophic level organisms so that the struggling
trophic level below can recover.
B. a means of reversing the effects of pollution by applying antidote chemicals that
have a neutralizing effect on the community.
C. an example of how one would use bottom-up model for ecosystem restoration.
D. adjusting the population numbers of each of the trophic levels back to the
numbers that they were before man started disturbing ecosystems.
E. monitoring and adjusting the nutrient and energy flow through a community with
new technologies.
A.
In a tide pool, 15 species of invertebrates were reduced to eight after one species was removed. The species removed was likely a(n)
A. resource partitioner.
B. mutualistic organism.
C. community facilitator.
D. keystone species.
E. herbivore.
D.
The energetic hypothesis and dynamic stability hypothesis are explanations to account for
A. plant defences against herbivores.
B. the length of food chains.
C. the evolution of mutualism.
D. resource partitioning.
E. the competitive exclusion principle.
B.
With a few exceptions, most of the food chains studied by ecologists have a maximum of how many links?
A. 2.
B. 3.
C. 5.
D. 10.
E. 15.
C.
The species richness of a community refers to the
A. complexity of the food web.
B. relative numbers of individuals in each species.
C. number of different species.
D. the bottom-heavy shape of the energy pyramid.
E. total number of all organisms.
C.
White-breasted nuthatches and Downy woodpeckers both eat insects that hide in the furrows of bark in hardwood trees. The Downy woodpecker searches for insects by hunting from the bottom of the tree trunk to the top, while the White-breasted nuthatch searches from the top of the trunk down. These hunting behaviours best illustrate which of the following ecological concepts?
A. competitive exclusion.
B. resource partitioning.
C. character displacement.
D. keystone species.
E. individualistic hypothesis.
B.
Historically, most ecological research on the community has focused on which of the following?
A. competition or predation between two different species.
B. mutualistic relationships and other positive interactions.
C. parasite-host relationships.
D. commensalistic relationships.
E. herbivory interactions.
A.
Which of the following examples best describes an ecological community?
A. The intraspecific competition of members of a brook trout population inhabiting
a stream during a given year.
B. The interactions of all the plant and animal species inhabiting a 2-hectare forest.
C. The material cycling and energy transformations between the biotic and abiotic
components of an open meadow.
D. The various species of barnacles competing for resources in an intertidal zone.
E. The interactions of the various plant and animal species of park, excepting the
decomposers.
B.
Which of the following terms best describes the interaction between termites and the protozoans that feed in their gut?
A. commensalism.
B. mutualism.
C. competitive exclusion.
D. ectoparasitism.
E. endoparasitism.
B.
Which of the following is an example of Batesian mimicry?
A. an insect that resembles a twig.
B. a butterfly that resembles a leaf.
C. a non-venomous snake that looks like a venomous snake.
D. a fawn with fur colouring that camouflages it in the forest environment.
E. a snapping turtle that uses its tongue to mimic a worm, thus attracting fish.
C.
Which of the following is an example of Müllerian mimicry?
A. two species of unpalatable butterfly that have the same colour pattern.
B. a day-flying hawkmoth that looks like a wasp.
C. a chameleon that changes its colour to look like a dead leaf.
D. two species of rattlesnakes that both rattle their tails.
E. two species of moths with wing spots that look like owl’s eyes.
A.
Which of the following is an example of cryptic colouration?
A. bands on a coral snake.
B. brown colour of tree bark.
C. markings of a viceroy butterfly.
D. colours of an insect-pollinated flower.
E. a ʺwalking stickʺ insect that resembles a twig.
E.
As you study two closely related predatory insect species, the two-spot and the three- spot avenger beetles, you notice that each species seeks prey at dawn in areas without the other species. However, where their ranges overlap the two-spot avenger beetle hunts at night and the three-spot hunts in the morning. When you bring them into the laboratory, their offspring behave in the same manner. You have discovered an example of
A. mutualism.
B. character displacement.
C. Batesian mimicry.
D. facultative commensalism.
E. resource partitioning.
B.
Which of the following best describes resource partitioning?
A. Competitive exclusion results in the success of the superior species.
B. Slight variations in niche allow similar species to co-exist.
C. Two species can coevolve to share the same niche.
D. Differential resource utilization results in the decrease in species diversity
E. A climax community is reached when no new niches are available.
B.
The sum total of an organism’s interaction with the biotic and abiotic resources of its environment is called its
A. habitat.
B. logistic growth.
C. biotic potential.
D. carrying capacity.
E. ecological niche.
E.
According to the competitive exclusion principle, two species cannot continue to occupy the same
A. habitat. B. niche. C. territory. D. range. E. biome.
B.
Which of the following statements is consistent with the principle of competitive exclusion?
A. Bird species generally do not compete for nesting sites.
B. The density of one competing species will have a positive impact on the
population growth of the other competing species.
C. Two species with the same fundamental niche will exclude other competing
species.
D. Even a slight reproductive advantage will eventually lead to the elimination of
the less well adapted of two competing species.
E. Evolution tends to increase competition between related species.
D.
An ecological footprint is a construct that is useful
A. for a person living in a developed nation to consider to make better choices
when using global food and energy resources.
B. for a person living in a developing country to see how much of the world’s
resources are left for them.
C. in converting human foodsʹ meat biomass to plant biomass.
D. in making predictions about the global carrying capacity of humans.
E. in determining which nations produce the least amount of carbon dioxide from
the burning of fossil fuels.
A.
Most ecologists believe that the average global carrying capacity for the human population is between
A. 5 and 6 billion.
B. 6 and 8 billion.
C. 10 and 15 billion.
D. 15 and 20 billion.
E. 20 and 25 billion.
C.
Which of the following is a density-independent factor limiting human population growth?
A. social pressure for birth control. B. earthquakes.
C. plagues.
D. famines.
E. pollution.
B.
Which of the following is an incorrect statement about the regulation of populations? A. The logistic equation reflects the effect of density-dependent factors, which can
ultimately stabilize populations around the carrying capacity.
B. Density-independent factors have an increasingly greater effect as a population’s
density increases.
C. High densities in a population may cause physiological changes that inhibit
reproduction.
D. Because of the overlapping nature of population-regulating factors, it is often
difficult to precisely determine their cause-and-effect relationships.
E. The occurrence of population cycles in some populations may be the result of
crowding or lag times in the response to density-dependent factors.
B.
Your friend comes to you with a problem. It seems his shrimp boats aren’t catching nearly as much shrimp as they used to. He can’t understand why because originally he caught all the shrimp he could handle. Each year he added a new boat, and for a long time each boat caught tons of shrimp. As he added more boats, there came a time when each boat caught somewhat fewer shrimp, and now, each boat is catching a lot less shrimp. Which of the following topics might help your friend understand the source of his problem?
A. density-dependent population regulation and intrinsic characteristics of population growth.
B. exponential growth curves and unlimited environmental resources. C. density-independent population regulation and chance occurrence.
D. pollution effects of a natural environment and learned shrimp behaviour.
E. a K-selected population switching to an r-selected population.
A.
Which of the following characterizes relatively K-selected populations? A. offspring with good chances of survival.
B. many offspring per reproductive episode.
C. small offspring.
D. a high intrinsic rate of increase. E. early parental reproduction.
A.
Which of the following describes having more than one reproductive episode during a lifetime?
A. cohort.
B. dispersion.
C. Allee effect.
D. iteroparous.
E. semelparous.
D.
Pacific salmon or annual plants illustrate which of the following? A. cohort.
B. dispersion.
C. Allee effect.
D. iteroparous.
E. semelparous.
E.
The Allee effect is used to describe a population that
A. has become so small that it will have difficulty surviving and reproducing. B. has become so large it will have difficulty surviving and reproducing.
C. approaches carrying capacity.
D. exceeds carrying capacity.
E. is in crash decline.
A.
As N approaches K for a certain population, which of the following is predicted by the logistic equation?
A. The growth rate will not change.
B. The growth rate will approach zero.
C. The population will show an Allee effect.
D. The population will increase exponentially.
E. The carrying capacity of the environment will increase.
B.
Imagine that you are managing a large ranch. You know from historical accounts that wild sheep used to live there, but they have been extirpated. You decide to reintroduce them. After doing some research to determine what might be an appropriately sized founding population, you do so. You then watch the population increase for several generations, and graph the number of individuals (vertical axis) against the number of generations (horizontal axis). The graph will appear as
A. a diagonal line, getting higher with each generation. B. an ʺSʺ, increasing with each generation.
C. an upside-down ʺUʺ.
D. a ʺJʺ, increasing with each generation.
E. an ʺSʺ that ends with a vertical line.
D.
Which of the following groups would be most likely to exhibit uniform dispersion? A. red squirrels, who actively defend territories.
B. cattails, which grow primarily at edges of lakes and streams.
C. dwarf mistletoes, which parasitize particular species of forest tree.
D. moths in a city at night.
E. lake trout, which seek out deep water.
A.
Which of the following assumptions have to be made regarding the capture-recapture estimate of population size? I. Marked and unmarked individuals have the same probability of being trapped; II. The marked individuals have thoroughly mixed with population after being marked; III. No individuals have entered or left the population by immigration or emigration, and no individuals have been added by birth or eliminated by death during the course of the estimate.
A. I only.
B. II only
C. I and II only.
D. II and III only.
E. I, II, and III.
E.
To measure the population of lake trout in a 250-hectare lake, 200 individuals were netted and marked with a fin clip, and then returned to the lake. The next week, the lake is netted again, and out of the 200 lake trout that are caught, 50 have fin clips. Using the capture-recapture estimate, the lake trout population size could be closest to which of the following?
A. 200.
B. 250.
C. 400.
D. 800.
E. 40,000.
D.
Which of the following examples would most accurately measure the density of the population being studied?
A. counting the number of prairie dog burrows per hectare.
B. counting the number of times a 1 kilometre transect is intersected by tracks of
red squirrels after a snowfall.
C. counting the number of coyote droppings per hectare.
D. multiplying the number of moss plants counted in 10, 1-m2 quadrats by 100 to
determine the density per km2.
E. counting the number of zebras from airplane census observations.
E.
A table listing such items as age, observed number of organisms alive each year, and life expectancy is known as a (an)
A. life table.
B. mortality table.
C. survivorship table. D. rate table.
E. insurance table.
A.
During the spring, you are studying the mice that live in a field near your home. There are lots of mice in this field, but you realize that you rarely observe any reproductive females. This most likely indicates
A. that there is selective predation on female mice.
B. that female mice die before reproducing.
C. that this habitat is a good place for mice to reproduce. D. that you are observing immigrant mice.
E. that the breeding season is over.
D.
To measure the population density of monarch butterflies occupying a particular park, 100 butterflies are captured, marked with a small dot on a wing, and then released. The next day, another 100 butterflies are captured, including the recapture of 20 marked butterflies. One would estimate the population to be A. 200.
B. 500.
C. 1,000.
D. 10,000.
E. 900,000.
B.
An ecologist recorded 12 white-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, per square mile in one woodlot and 20 per square mile on another woodlot. What was the ecologist comparing?
A. density.
B. dispersion.
C. carrying capacity. D. quadrats.
E. range.
A.
A population is correctly defined as having which of the following characteristics? I. inhabiting the same general area; II. individuals belonging to the same species; III. possessing a constant and uniform density and dispersion
A. I only.
B. III only.
C. I and II only. D. II and III only. E. I, II, and III.
C.
Concept 15.5 ___(a)___ alter community ___(b)___ locally and globally.
(a) Pathogens
(b) structure
