Unit 2 Flashcards
What is the general definition of a species?
How do species relate to populations?
Explain and differentiate between the biological species concept, morphological species concept, and the phylogenetic species concept.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each species concept?
Define speciation
Describe the overall process of speciation.
Explain how each mechanism of evolution affects the process of speciation differently.
Why does gene flow inhibit speciation?
Distinguish between allopatric and sympatric speciation.
Distinguish between allopatric speciation by dispersal and vicariance.
Explain how sympatric speciation can occur through extrinsic factors like disruptive selection
Explain how sympatric speciation can occur through chromosomal mutations, such as autopolyploidy and allopolyploidy. In which group of organisms is this type of speciation most common?
What processes can lead to genetic isolation after divergence of populations?
What is prezygotic reproductive isolation?
What is postzygotic reproductive isolation?
Explain the process of fusion.
Under what circumstances will fusion occur?
What is the outcome of fusion?
Explain the process of reinforcement.
Under what circumstances will reinforcement occur?
What is the outcome of reinforcement?
Explain the process of hybrid zone formation.
Under what circumstances will a hybrid zone occur?
How and why do hybrid zones change over time?
Explain the process of hybrid speciation.
Under what circumstances will hybrid speciation occur?
What is the outcome of hybrid speciation?
Predict what can happen when two partially divergent populations come into contact again under various circumstances.
Define macroevolution.
What is systematics?
What are monophyletic groups?
What are polyphyletic groups?
What are paraphyletic groups?
Generally, how are phylogenetic trees estimated?
How does convergent evolution produce homoplasy?
Describe anagenesis and cladogenesis? How can we visualize these processes on a phylogenetic tree.
What do the branch lengths on a phylogenetic tree mean?
Distinguish between ancestral traits, derived traits, and synapomorphies
What is parsimony and how does it influence phylogenetic tree construction?
Explain why a phylogenetic tree is a hypothesis of inferred relationships subject to further refinement.
What is the fossil record? How the depth of a fossil in the rock strata allow us to make inferences about the species evolutionary history.
What is the geologic time scale? How old is the Earth? When did life first appear on Earth? Why does the Earth’s age matter when considering macroevolution.
Explain the five pieces of evidence that show that species change over time.
Explain the three pieces of evidence that show that species are related.
Define ecology and distinguish between levels of ecological study.
How does ecology link to evolutionary processes?
List the major abiotic drivers of climate.
Define climate and explain how climate is different than weather.
Explain how solar radiation flows through the global cycle.
Explain how greenhouse gasses mediate Earth’s temperature.
Explain why the tropics are warmer than temperate regions
Explain how cycles in global air circulation impacts global patterns of precipitation
Explain how cold and hot air vary in density, water retention, and pressure
Describe how the Hadley cell works to impact precipitation patterns and produce deserts at 30°N and S.
Explain how Earth’s orbit and tilt influence seasons
Predict what would happen if the Earth’s tilt changes. In what regions, would such a change have the greatest effect.
Explain how mountains and oceans influence climate.
How does a rain shadow form?
Explain how gyres impact currents and land temperatures
Explain why coastal areas have milder climates than inland areas of the same latitude.
Explain the primary abiotic conditions that determine terrestrial and aquatic biomes.
Explain why biomes vary predictably across latitude.
Explain how ocean upwelling and lake turnover occur.
Why is nutrient cycling important in aquatic biomes?
Describe distribution. How does a species range relate to distribution of populations?
Explain the role of fitness trade-offs in determining organismal distribution.
What is a performance curve? How might performance curves vary among organisms living in different environments?
How does dispersal ability influence distribution?
How do species interactions influence distribution?
How does Earth history (movement of the continents) influence distribution?
How do performance curves relate to the niche concept?
Explain Hutchinson’s n-dimensional hypervolume.
Distinguish between fundamental and realized niche. How are they determined?
Within a population, explain how organisms show random, clumped, or uniform distributions.
Identify some biological scenarios that can lead to different distributions of organisms within a population.
Describe the different ways populations can be spatially distributed.
Explain how populations change over time. Describe how these changes are related to survivorship curves and life history strategies.
What information does a life table provide?
Explain the role of births, deaths, immigration, and emigration in determining population changes.
What is a survivorship curve? Be able to draw and explain Type I, Type II, and Type III
What are traits of organisms that generally follow a Type I, II, or III curve?
Explain different reproductive strategies.
How does fecundity relate to net reproductive rate
What is life history? What are some life history traits? Explain how an organism’s life history is the result of trade-offs. Explain how an organism’s life history is dependent on its environment.
Why do populations overshoot carrying capacity?
Explain dN/dt. What is this term measuring?
Explain how scientists classify species interactions. What is meant by a + interaction? A – interaction? A 0 interaction?
Define the five types of species interactions and identify an example of each species interaction
What is a symbiosis? Which species interactions could be symbiotic?
Differentiate between interference and exploitative competition.
What is competitive exclusion? When will competitive exclusion occur?
Explain the process of niche partitioning and character displacement. How are these processes different? How are they similar? How do they interact to minimize competition between organisms?
Explain how environmental conditions impact species interactions.
Explain the process of coevolution
What species interactions are most likely to cause coevolution?
Describe an evolutionary arms race. What species interactions are likely to cause an evolutionary arms race?
Define succession
Describe the types of life history traits that will be prevalent at the different stages of succession
Describe different types of disturbance and recognize whether a disturbance will result in primary or secondary succession.
Differentiate between dominant and keystone species and explain their importance to community structure.
Explain how species richness and species evenness contribute to community diversity and characterize the structure of a community.
Explain the purpose of a diversity index. How do researchers choose which index to use?
Explain how traits of organisms, like size and mobility, may introduce bias into estimates of richness and evenness
Define biodiversity
Where does energy in an ecosystem come from originally?
Explain GPP
Explain NPP
Contrast autotrophs and heterotrophs. How do autotrophs gain energy? How do heterotrophs gain energy?
Why is energy lost between each trophic level? How does that impact the biomass of each trophic level?
Differentiate between bottom up and top-down influences on community structure. Using an interactions network, make predictions on how community structure will change after a disturbance.
Define trophic cascade
Explain why decomposers are very important to ecosystem functioning.
Explain nutrient cycling and the factors that control the rate of cycling.
Describe how water flows through the global water cycle.
Describe how nitrogen flows through the global nitrogen cycle.
Describe how carbon flows through the global carbon cycle.
Define endemic species and their role in biodiversity.
Explain the link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
What are the three main categories of ecosystems services? Provide an example of each
Define endangered species.
What species traits are linked with extinction risk?
Explain the causes of the five mass extinction events in Earth history.
When did these mass extinction events occur?
What is the definition of a mass extinction event?
What factors led to past mass extinctions?
Discuss the evidence in favor of a current mass extinction (6th mass extinction)
Define endemic species and their role in biodiversity
