Week 1 and 2

Question 1

Processes that define a living thing

Answer 1

• Organization and information
• Need for an energy source
• Reproduction and evolution

Question 2

What happens when an organism breaks down and no longer maintains a certain level of organization

Answer 2

It dies

Question 3

How do living things impose organization on non-living matter?

Answer 3

By growth, development, and reproduction

Question 4

Homeostasis

Answer 4

A critical aspect of life’s organization is a constant internal environment, called homeostasis, which makes the complex biochemical machinery of life possible.

Question 5

Living things use a template to impose order on nonliving things and to maintain order within their own bodies.
In present day living things this template is called

Answer 5

DNA
This template makes proteins, which are responsible for our structure, function, and metabolism-it is copied every time living things reproduce.

Question 6

As close to the basis of life as we can get

Answer 6

DNA

Question 7

All living things require a constant input of _________ to survive.

Answer 7

energy

Question 8

dynamic equilibrium

Answer 8

an organized system that requires a constant input of energy to maintain itself.

Question 9

What happens to an organism without an input of energy?

Answer 9

Organization breaks down and death is imminent.

Question 10

heterotroph

Answer 10

Process energy that was originally captured by other living things.

Question 11

autotroph

Answer 11

fix energy from the sunlight

Question 12

chemoautotroph

Answer 12

fix energy by reducing hydrogen sulfide

Question 13

When does the ambiguous nature of a virus become apparent?

Answer 13

Reproduction and evolution.
A virus alone is inert. It does not use energy and cannot reproduce. In the presence of the right living cells, however, viruses can direct the production of million copies of themselves.

Question 14

species

Answer 14

1-can interbreed with eachother
2-share a set of common traits
3-an evolutionary lineage that persists, ancestor to dependent over time.

Question 15

Approximately how many species are on earth

Answer 15

2 million described. Estimated to be 8.7 million, but may be much higher.
(1 million of these are insects)

Question 16

What are some problems with the naming of species?

Answer 16

• It is complicated process to name a sepcies. (time consuming and demands special skills)
• difficultly with the concept of the species (cryptic species, species named more than once, etc.)
• Some species have been named several times

Question 17

What is the problem with the naming of Allosaurus?

Answer 17

• There is a great deal of variation among specimens attributed to that species-and in reality, the fossils we have may have represented several species.
• Also the largest specimens are often placed in the genus Epanterias, or Saurophagnax-but we do not really know whether they were simply big individuals of A. fragilis.

Question 18

Some of the taxa that are better known

Answer 18

birds, mammals, flowering plants, and butterflies are well known.

Question 19

Some of the taxa that are not as well known

Answer 19

microorganisms, beetles, insects

Question 20

The Tree of Life

Answer 20

• All organisms on Earth descend from a single, common ancestor.
• This ancestor may have been a single species, or a cluster of organisms freely exchanging genetic material.
• In scientific terms, the tree of life is a diagram representing the actual diversification of organisms from a common ancestor.

Question 21

How do we know that there was only one common ancestor? Or that other unrelated forms have gone extinct?

Answer 21

• Except for a few virus, all forms of life on earth use DNA as genetic material
• All forms of life contain a very similar, almost identical genetic code
• All forms of life rely on the same biomolecules. (Amino acids, sugars, etc.)

Question 22

The 5 Kingdoms

Answer 22

Plantae, protista, monera (includes all prokaryotes), fungi, animalia

Question 23

Are prokaryotes closer to Eukaryotes or bacteria?

Answer 23

Eukaryotes

Question 24

The major “domains” of living things

Answer 24

Prokaryote, Eukaryote, Bacteria

Question 25

What is the chart that shows the 3 "domains of living things" based on

Answer 25

Ribosomal RNA

Question 26

Prokaryotes

Answer 26

Most ancient, abundant and metabolically diverse organisms. Describes a state of organization (no nucleus) rather than a taxonomic group Includes bacteria and archaea

Question 27

Proterobacteria

Answer 27

a large and diverse group that includes photoautotrophs, chemoautotrophs, and heterotrophs. Prokaryotes

Question 28

Spirochetes

Answer 28

Move by a spiraling corkscrew motion. Free living and parasitic. Syphilis and lyme disease Prokaryotes

Question 29

Archaea

Answer 29

Group includes many extremophiles (thermophiles, halophiles, methanogens) Many look a lot like fossils that have been dates at more than 2 billion years old Prokaryotes

Question 30

Eukaryotes

Answer 30

Nuclei usually posses membrane bound organelles between 11 and 20 eukaryote kingdoms

Question 31

Where is it most likely the first Eukaryotes came from?

Answer 31

an amalgam of prokaryote species, and possibly a viral component as well.

Question 32

Protists

Answer 32

Eukaryotes that are single celled for most of their lives | some have acquired photosynthesis and became algae.

Question 33

Fungi

Answer 33

includes decomposers, parasites, and mutualisms.

Question 34

4 major groups of fungi

Answer 34

Chrytridomycots Zygomycots Ascomycots Basidiomycots

Question 35

Viridiplantae

Answer 35

* includes the green plants and the basal “bush” from which they originated. They have chlorophyls a and b, as well as certain other distinguishing characteristics. * Green Algae-Chlorophytes * Charophytes * Plants

Question 36

True Plants

Answer 36

``` multiterrestrial, photosynthesizers, terrestrial. Includes *gynosperms *angiosperms *ferns *mosses ```

Question 37

Animals

Answer 37

Animals are a true lineage of multicellular organisms evolved from one line of protists

Question 38

How many present day phylums are there?

Answer 38

About 30

Question 39

biological population

Answer 39

Many individuals of a single species

Question 40

biological communities

Answer 40

Populations of organisms tend to assemble into these

Question 41

biodiversity

Answer 41

Genetic diversity within populations Diversity of species or lineages (taxonomic diversity) communities and ecosystems

Question 42

Genetic diversity

Answer 42

example-variation of cultivated plants such as tomatoes.

Question 43

Taxonomic diversity

Answer 43

Number of different species a habitat contains.

Question 44

How many species of snakes are in California?

Answer 44

73 in various families

Question 45

Major areas of unexplored biodiversity

Answer 45

Tropical rainforest (cover 6% of the land are, but 4/5 of all plant species and 1/2 the animals are found there), ocean floor (70% of the world's surface, estimated to be 95% unexplored) microbial world

Question 46

the first pollinators were probably

Answer 46

herbivores attracted to pollen as a source of food.

Question 47

talk about hawkmoths and long corollas

Answer 47

A flower evolves a long corolla to ensure that hawkmoth visitors must reach deeply into a flower in order to reach the nectar “reward” provided by the flower, thus placing their faces in the appropriate location to receive pollen. The hawkmoths respond by evolving longer tongues, to enable them to more easily reach the nectaries of the flowers. This, in turn, places selective pressure on the flowers, and intensifies the relationship. The longer nectary, in turn, makes it nearly impossible for long-tongued bees to visit the flowers, and drives the system toward an obligate mutualism, rather than a looser, facultative mutualism

Question 48

The most common pollintation "syndromes"

Answer 48

Most flies and generalists (most beetles)-open flowers, easy to reach pollen, accessible nectaries. Large amounts of pollen because most of the visitors are after pollen. Usually early spring. Long-tongued bees-moderately long corollas, flowers are white, blue, yellow, infrared, sucrose-concentrated nectar, sometimes a “landing pad” for bees, and sometimes petals that must be pushed apart for the bee to reach the nectar. Scented flowers, open in daytime. Sticky pollen that bees can easily collect and transport, nectar guides. Short-tongued bees-white, yellow, infrared flowers, short corollas with easily available pollen, no special tricks with petals, but usually asymmetric. Scented flowers open in daytime. Sticky pollen. Sucrose-dominated nectar. Bumblebees, Amigillia bees-as with long-tongued bee flowers, but bee must hang upside and buzz to release pollen.

Question 49

Polination syndrome of butterflies

Answer 49

flowers run more to the pink or lavender and have a landing platform.

Question 50

polination syndrome of hummingbirds

Answer 50

-red flowers (only vertebrates see that color well) with very long corollas and large amounts of dilute nectar, flowers open in daytime, and bird is forced to push face into stamens in order to feed. No scent.

Question 51

polination syndrome of bats

Answer 51

large amounts of dusty pollen that will stick to mammal hairs, very big flowers that bats can reach into with their faces, open at night,

Question 52

pollination syndrome of carrion beatles and flies

Answer 52

flowers smell like carrion and offer large amounts of pollen

Question 53

Ecology

Answer 53

the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of organisms, and their interactions with the environment.

Question 54

hypothesis

Answer 54

constructed based on all the pertinent observations.

Question 55

scientific paradigms

Answer 55

Scientific paradigms are explanations for how the world works, they inspire future research, but also limit its direction to certain avenues.

Question 56

Individuals

Answer 56

single, discrete organisms. ex-a mouse, a person. can be difficult with trees or fungus.

Question 57

organismal ecology.

Answer 57

ex- How a cave cricket gets in and out of the cave safely.

Question 58

populations

Answer 58

groups of organisms of the same species living in the same place. ex-a herd of wildebeast, all the catfish in a pond, E. Coli in a person's gut.

Question 59

population ecology

Answer 59

Very frequently, these questions concern abundance, density, population growth, and limits to growth. For instance, a population ecologist might study the extent to which the number of available nest sites affects the maximum number of tropicbirds an island can sustain.

Question 60

Communities

Answer 60

assemblages of populations of different species living in the same place.

Question 61

community ecology

Answer 61

might ask questions about the extent to which parasitic wasps control outbreaks of pine sawflies, and whether the presence of parasitoids is necessary for the presence of pine trees.

Question 62

Ecosystems

Answer 62

interacting assemblages of living things living in a particular area, accounting also for the nonliving components, such as light, water, nutrients, soil, and seasonality, that are important to life.

Question 63

ecosystems ecology

Answer 63

studying caves might ask questions about the role of bat guano entering the caves, and the extent to which nutrients and energy brought in by the bats from outside, via their guano, support the nonphotosynthetic ecosystem in the cave.

Question 64

Biological Species Concept

Answer 64

“A species is a group of actually or potentially interbreeding organisms that can mate and produce fertile offspring” –Ernst Mayer This definition is very interesting from an evolutionary perspective. It defines species as “real”, objective entities, defined by the limits of gene exchange

Question 65

Morphological Species

Answer 65

More subjective than the biological species concept. “Species are Groups of Organisms that Share Certain Morphological or Biochemical Traits” Some species do not reproduce sexually, some are known only from fossils. This definition is the working definition used by biologists that cannot, or should not, use the “Biological Species Concept”

Question 66

Phylogenetic Species Concept

Answer 66

A species is a discrete lineage, propagated, ancestor to descendent through time, which is recognizably different from other such lineages and shares a distinct evolutionary history. It defines a species by its relationship to other species.