NAME___________________________ BIOL365 - Ecology Dr. Richard B. Brugam Fall 1998, Exam 1 Each multiple choice question is worth 3 points. Please choose the answer that you think is most correct. 1. Who coined the word "ecology"? a. Abbie Hoffman in the 1960's ecology movement c. G.E. Hutchinson, an early student of the niche b. Charles Darwin d. Ernst Haekel, a German evolutionist of the late 1800's 2. What stops exponential growth of populations? a. Energy limitation c. Limitation of resources b. Predation d. The intrinsic rate of natural increase declines 3. What is K in the following equation? a. The intrinsic rate of natural increase c. A constant in all places and all experiments b. The growth rate of the population d. An upper limit on population growth 4. K varies with: a. Amount of resources b. Number of predators c. Weather d. Soil type 5. What are the units of K? a. Numbers of individuals c. Amounts of limiting resources (i.e. Kg. of grass for cows to eat) b. Numbers of individuals per unit time d. K is a dimensionless constant 6. What happens if a population is reduced below its carrying capacity? a. It dies back to carrying capacity c. The population will die out b. It remains constant d. The population will grow back to the carrying capacity 7. What happens to a population when there is a lag-time between conception and birth? a. The population shows constant growth c. The population will show cycles b. The population becomes a good competitor d. The population will die off 8. In the following equation, what is (alpha)? a. The intrinsic rate of natural increase c. The population growth rate b. The competition coefficient d. The carrying capacity 9. What happens in Gause's competition experiment between Paramecium aurelia and P. bursaria when Gauses turned out the lights? a. P. aurelia won at competition c. Both species coexisted b. P. bursaria won at competition d. P. bursaria ate up P. aurelia and then starved to death 10. Park did experiments with flour beetles. What were his results? a. Flour beetles show indeterminant results of competition b. Flour beetles show time lags in the Verhulst-Pearl equations c. Flour beetles show that the winner in competition depends strongly on environmental conditions d. Flour beetles show stable-limit cycles 11. When the California Department of Agriculture introduced the three wasps that are parasitic on scale insects, what happened? a. The wasps ate each other b. The wasps totally eliminated scale insects c. The wasps competed with one another and split their Southern California range among each other d. The wasps died out 12. What real world case best explains the result of the Gause Competition Equations where the species with the highest number of individuals at the start of the experiment wins? a. Toxin production by the competitors b. Use of two separate resources by the competitors c. More efficient use of the resource by one of the species. 13. What was the main point of Connel's experiment with barnacles? a. That predators control species distributions b. That competition can control species distributions c. That physiological controls are responsible for all of the species ranges we see d. That the Gause Hypothesis is false 14. If two species compete for the same limiting resource, what is the likely outcome? a. One will harvest the resource better and cause the other to go extinct b. They will occupy different parts of the environment where each is better fitted and is the better competitor c. They will evolve mechanisms that reduce the competition between themselves d. All of the above in different times and different places 15. Under which of the following circumstances is competitive exclusion unlikely to occur? a. An early successional species like ragweed that are poor competitors, but which rely on good dispersal for persistence b. Trees on a hillside c. Barnacles on a rock d. Warblers in a forest 16. What is the "Paradox of the Plankton"? a. The problem that phytoplankton compete strongly and some go extinct easily b. The problem that there are many species of phytoplankton coexisting in a homogeneous lake c. The problem that phytoplankton are subject to strong predation d. The problem that we cannot identify all species of the phytoplankton 17. What are fugitive species? a. Species in an environment where conditions are constantly changing b. Species which are poor competitors, but which rely on good dispersal for their persistence c. Species in an old-growth forest d. The phytoplankton 18. What is the definition of a species according to the biological species concept? a. A group of animals that looks alike b. A group of actually or potentially interbreeding plants or animals c. A group of animals that lives in the same place d. A group of animals or plants that uses the same resource 19. One result of speciation is: a. the mixing of genetic material from the two species b. The evolution of anti-competition mechanisms between the two species c. Convergence of morphological characters between the two species d. Evolution of the two species to use the same resources 20. Five species of warbler live in the Maine woods. How can they coexist? a. They use different resources c. They behave differently b. They forage in different parts of the trees d. All of these 21. In Werner and Hall's experiment with sunfish, what happened when green sunfish were added to ponds with bluegills and pumpkinseeds? a. The bluegills won at competition and caused the other two species to go extinct b. The green sunfish were the superior competitor and ate the insects on aquatic vegetation, forcing the other two into suboptimal habitats c. Both the pumpkinseed and the bluegill outcompeted the greens and prevented them from surviving. d. Green sunfish ate the eggs of the other species, causing their extinction 22. I have a fish aquarium at home. I try to stock it with a wide variety of aquatic plants. At the end of a year, only one species survives. Why? a. This is the only one physiologically suited to my aquarium. b. Competitive exclusion has occurred c. You can't differentiate between a & b without an appropriate experiment 23. What was Andrewarth and Birch's major argument? a. That niches are real b. That density dependent population control is important in communities c. That density independent population control mechanisms are most important in communities d. That Thrips imaginis is controlled by bird predation. 24. Finches in the Galapagoes Islands tend to eat different foods if they coexist on an island. What is this called? a. Competitive exclusion c. Character displacement b. Niche segregation d. Exponential growth 25. Why did Balanus die out in the upper intertidal of Connel's experiments? a. Balanus eats less phytoplankton than its competitor, Cthamalus b. Because Cthamalus outcompeted Balanus c. Because Balanus was physiologically limited to parts of the intertidal that remain under water longer d. Cthamalus preyed on Balanus 26. Hutchinson viewed an organism's niche as a space in many dimensions where each dimension measured a resource or environmental condition necessary for life. What is this niche called? a. the Eltonian Niche c. The Realized Niche b. The Habitat Niche d. The Niche Hypervolume 27. The part of the niche occupied by a species after accounting is made for competitive exclusion is called: a. The realized niche c. The niche hypervolume b. The fundamental niche d. The Eltonian niche 28. When would you use the Bitterlich Variable Plot Method? a. To count trees in a heterogeneous forest where it was important to understand the heterogeneity b. In a large homogeneous forest where you have a short time to do the sampling c. In a forest where you must know the density of trees 29. What is meant by relative density of a tree species? a. The weight of a tree per unit volume b. The percent abundance of a particular tree species c. The area of the tree at breast height 30. Why would one measure basal area of tree species in a forest rather than the number of stems? a. Basal area measures the density of trees per unit area b. Basal area accounts for differences in the size c. Basal area accounts for differences in the number of stems d. Basal area measures the number of trees in the forest 31. Spirodela and Lemna are two plant species commonly called "duckweeds". They float on the surface of ponds and eventually cover the entire pond. How would you test to see of they compete? Suggest field or laboratory experiments or both. (10 pts.)