In the figure above, which of the following survivorship curves
implies that an animal may lay many eggs, of which a regular number
die each year on a logarithmic scale?
A) curve A
B) curve
B
C) curve C
B
In the figure above, which of the following survivorship curves most
applies to humans living in developed countries?
A) curve
A
B) curve B
C) curve C
D) curve A or curve B
A
Using the table above, how would you describe the population dynamics
of L. vivipara?
A) The population is increasing.
B) The
population is decreasing.
C) The population is stable.
D)
The figure does not provide this information.
A
Using the table above, determine which age class year would hurt the
population growth most if it were wiped out by disease.
A) age
class year 1
B) age class year 2
C) age class year 3
D)
age class year 4
A
Suppose researchers marked 800 turtles and later were able to trap a
total of 300 individuals in that population, of which 150 were marked.
What is the estimate for total population size?
A) 200
B)
1050
C) 1600
D) 2100
C
Looking at the figure above, what is contributing significantly to
stabilizing population size over time?
I) no migration
II)
low migration
III) high migration
A) only I
B) only II
C) only III
D) only II and III
C
Which of the following assumptions have to be made regarding the
mark-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
the 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) I, II,
and III
D
Which of the following is the most important assumption for the
mark-recapture method to estimate the size of wildlife
populations?
A) More individuals emigrate from, as opposed to
immigrate into, a population.
B) Over 50% of the marked
individuals need to be trapped during the recapture phase.
C)
There is a 50:50 ratio of males to females in the population before
and after trapping and recapture.
D) Marked individuals have the
same probability of being recaptured as unmarked individuals during
the recapture phase.
D
Use the survivorship curves in the figure below to answer the
following questions.
Refer to the figure above. Which curve best describes
survivorship in marine molluscs?
A) A
B) B
C) C
D) E
D
Use the survivorship curves in the figure below to answer the
following questions.
Refer to the figure above. Which curve best describes
survivorship in elephants?
A) A
B) B
C) C
D) E
A
To measure the population of lake trout in a 250-hectare lake, 400
individual trout were netted and marked with a fin clip, then returned
to the lake. The next week, the lake was netted again, and out of the
200 lake trout that were caught, 50 had fin clips. Using the
mark-recapture estimate, the lake trout population size could be
closest to which of the following?
A) 200
B) 400
C)
1,600
D) 80,000
C
Long-term studies of Belding's ground squirrels show that immigrants
move nearly 2 kilometers from where they are born and become 1%-8% of
the males and 0.7%-6% of the females in other populations. On an
evolutionary scale, why is this significant?
A) These immigrants
make up for the deaths of individuals, keeping the other populations'
size stable.
B) These immigrants provide a source of genetic
diversity for the other populations.
C) Those individuals that
emigrate to these new populations are looking for less crowded
conditions with more resources.
D) Gradually, the populations of
ground squirrels will move from a clumped to a uniform population
pattern of dispersion.
B
A population is correctly defined as having which of the following
characteristics?
I) inhabiting the same general area
II)
belonging to the same species
III) possessing a constant and
uniform density and dispersion
A) III only
B) I and II only
C) II and III
only
D) I, II, and III
B
An ecologist recorded twelve white-tailed deer, Odocoileus
virginianus, per square kilometer in one woodlot and twenty per square
kilometer in another woodlot. What was the ecologist
comparing?
A) density
B) dispersion
C) carrying
capacity
D) range
A
Uniform spacing patterns in plants such as the creosote bush are most
often associated with _____.
A) patterns of high humidity
B)
the random distribution of seeds
C) competitive interaction
between individuals of the same population
D) the concentration
of nutrients within the population's range
C
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) lake trout, which seek out cold, deep
water high in dissolved oxygen
A
Which of the following examples would most accurately measure the
density of the population being studied?
A) counting the number
of times a one-kilometer transect is intersected by tracks of red
squirrels after a snowfall
B) counting the number of coyote
droppings per hectare
C) counting the number of moss plants in
one-square-meter quadrants
D) counting the number of zebras from
airplane census observations.
C
Which of the following scenarios would provide the most relevant data
on population density?
A) Count the number of nests of a
particular species of songbird and multiply this by a factor that
extrapolates these data to actual animals.
B) Count the number of
pine trees in several randomly selected 10-meter-square plots and
extrapolate this number to the fraction of the study area these plots
represent.
C) Use the mark-recapture method to estimate the size
of the population.
D) Calculate the difference between all of the
immigrants and emigrants to see if the population is growing or shrinking.
B
Which of the following is the best natural example of uniform
distribution?
A) bees collecting pollen in a wildflower
meadow
B) snails in an intertidal zone at low tide
C)
territorial songbirds in a mature forest during mating season
D)
mushrooms growing on the floor of an old growth forest
C
Use the survivorship curves in the figure below to answer the
following questions.
Refer to the figure above. Which statement best explains
survivorship curve B?
A) It is likely a species that provides
little postnatal care, but lots of care for offspring during midlife
as indicated by increased survivorship.
B) This curve is likely
for a species that produces lots of offspring, only a few of which are
expected to survive.
C) It is likely a species where no
individuals in the cohort die when they are at 60-70% relative
age.
D) Survivorship can only decrease; therefore, this curve
could not happen in nature
D
In the figure above, which of the following survivorship curves
applies to most plant species?
A) curve A
B) curve B
C)
curve C
C
In July 2008, the United States had a population of approximately
302,000,000 people. How many Americans were there in July 2009, if the
estimated 2008 growth rate was 0.88%?
A) 5,500,000
B)
303,000,000
C) 304,000,000
D) 2,710,800,000
C
In 2008, the population of New Zealand was approximately 4,275,000
people. If the birth rate was 14 births for every 1000 people,
approximately how many births occurred in New Zealand in 2008?
A)
6,000
B) 42,275
C) 60,000
D) 140,000
C
In the figure above, which of the lines represents the highest
per-capita rate increase (r)?
A) line A
B) line B
C)
line C
D) line D
A
A population of ground squirrels has an annual per capita birth rate
of 0.06 and an annual per capita death rate of 0.02. Calculate an
estimate of the total number of individuals added to (or lost from) a
population of 1000 individuals in one year.
A) 120 individuals
added
B) 40 individuals added
C) 20 individuals
added
D) 400 individuals added
B
Starting from a single individual, what is the size of a population
of bacteria at the end of a two-hour time period if they reproduce by
binary fission every twenty minutes? (Assume unlimited resources and
no mortality.)
A) 16
B) 32
C) 64
D) 128
C
Which of the following graphs illustrates the population growth curve
of single bacterium growing in a flask of ideal medium at optimum
temperature over a two-hour period?
A) cliff
B) 2nd quadrant
C) upward trend
D) squiggle
C
During exponential growth, a population always _____.
A) grows
at its maximum per capita rate
B) quickly reaches its carrying
capacity
C) cycles through time
D) loses some individuals to emigration
A
Consider two old-growth forests: one is undisturbed while the other
is being logged. In which region are species likely to experience
exponential growth, and why?
A) Old growth, because of stable
conditions that would favor exponential growth of all species in the
forest.
B) Old growth, because each of the species is well
established and can produce many offspring.
C) Logged, because
the disturbed forest affords more resources for increased specific
populations to grow.
D) Logged, because the various populations
are stimulated to a higher reproductive potential.
C
Imagine that you are managing a large game ranch. You know from
historical accounts that a species of deer used to live there, but
they have been extirpated. After doing some research to determine what
might be an appropriately sized founding population, you reintroduce
them. You then watch the population increase for several generations,
and graph the number of individuals (vertical axis) against the number
of generations (horizontal axis). With no natural predators impacting
the population, the graph will likely appear as _____.
A) a
diagonal line, getting higher with each generation B) an "S"
that ends with a vertical line
C) an upside-down
"U"
D) a "J," increasing with each generation
D
In the figure above, which of the arrows represents the carrying
capacity?
A) arrow A
B) arrow B
C) arrow C
D)
Carrying capacity cannot be found in the figure because species under
density-dependent control never reach carrying capacity.
C
Which statements about K are correct?
I) K varies among
populations.
II) K varies in space.
III) K varies in
time.
IV) K is constant for any given species.
A) only I and III
B) only II and IV
C) only I, II, and
III
D) only II, III, and IV
C
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 increase exponentially.
D) The carrying capacity
of the environment will increase.
B
Which of the following causes populations to shift most quickly from
an exponential to a logistic population growth?
A) favorable
climatic conditions
B) removal of predators
C) decreased
death rate
D) competition for resources
D
Which of the following graphs best illustrates the growth curve of a
small population of rodents that has increased to a static carrying
capacity?
A) 2nd quadrant
B) upward trend
C) squiggle
D) part parabola
D
According to the logistic growth equation, = rmaxN ,
A) the
number of individuals added per unit time is greatest when N is close
to zero.
B) the per capita growth rate (r) increases as N
approaches K.
C) population growth is zero when N equals
K.
D) the population grows exponentially when K is small.
C
Looking at the data in the figure above, what can be said about
survival and clutch size?
A) Animals with low survival tend to
have smaller clutch sizes.
B) Large clutch size correlates with
low survival.
C) Animals with high survival tend to have larger
clutch sizes.
D) Probability of survivorship does not correlate
with clutch size.
B
What is the primary limiting factor that determines why no female
animal can produce a very large number of very large eggs?
A)
Time is limited.
B) There are energy constraints.
C)
Temperature constraints will prevent females from carrying too many
eggs.
D) There will be an increase in predation pressure if the
females carry too many large eggs.
B
You observe two female fish of the same species breeding. One female
lays 100 eggs and the other female lays 1000 eggs. Which one of the
following is LEAST likely given the limits of fitness
trade-offs?
A) The female laying 100 eggs breeds more often than
the female laying 1000 eggs.
B) The female laying 100 eggs lives
longer than the female laying 1000 eggs.
C) The eggs from the
female laying 1000 eggs have larger yolks than the yolks of the eggs
from the female laying 100 eggs.
D) The female laying 1000 eggs
is larger than the female laying 100 eggs.
C
Based on the figure above, which of the following statements
correctly interprets the data?
A) As female density increases,
clutch size increases.
B) As female density increases,
survivorship decreases.
C) Clutch size decreases as female
density increases.
C
Which pair of terms most accurately describes life history traits for
a stable population of wolves?
A) semelparous; r-selected
B)
semelparous; K-selected
C) iteroparous; r-selected
D)
iteroparous; K-selected
D
Natural selection involves energetic trade-offs between
_____.
A) choosing how many offspring to produce over the course
of a lifetime and how long to live
B) producing large numbers of
gametes when employing internal fertilization versus fewer numbers of
gametes when employing external fertilization
C) increasing the
number of individuals produced during each reproductive episode and a
corresponding decrease in parental care
D) high survival rates of
offspring and the cost of parental care
D
Which of the following is characteristic of 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
A
In which of the following situations would you expect to find the
largest number of K- selected individuals?
A) a recently
abandoned agricultural field in Ohio
B) a shifting sand dune
community of south Lake Michigan
C) an old-growth forest
D)
South Florida after a hurricane
C
Graph (b) in the figure above shows the normal fluctuations of a
population of grouse. Assuming graph (a) in the figure above is the
result of some experimental treatment in the grouse population, what
can be concluded?
A) The experimental treatment exacerbated the
population cycling.
B) The experimental treatment did not affect
population cycling in this species.
C) The experimental treatment
has most likely identified the cause of population cycling.
D)
None of the other responses is true.
C
What conclusion can you draw from the figure above?
A) Hares
control lynx population size.
B) Lynx control hare population
size.
C) Lynx and hare populations are independent of each
other.
D) The relationship between the populations cannot be
determined only from this graph.
D
Looking at the data in the figure above from the hare/lynx
experiment, what conclusion can you draw?
I) Food is a factor in
controlling hare population size.
II) Excluding lynx is a factor
in controlling hare population size.
III) The effect of excluding
predators and adding food in the same experiment is greater than the
sum of excluding lynx alone plus adding food alone.
A) only I
B) only II
C) only III
D) I, II, and III
D
Often the growth cycle of one population has an effect on the cycle
of another. As moose populations increase, for example, wolf
populations also increase. Thus, if we are considering the logistic
equation for the wolf population,
dN/dt = rN ,
which of the
factors accounts for the effect of the moose population?
A)
r
B) N
C) rN
D) K
D
Which of the following graphs illustrates the growth over several
seasons of a population of snowshoe hares that were introduced to an
appropriate habitat also inhabited by predators in northern
Canada?
A) cliff
B) second quadrant
C) upward
D) squiggle
D
The figure above represents the dynamics of _____.
A)
metapopulations
B) extinction
C) emigration
D) both
extinction and emigration
A
Use the following abstract from Theoretical Population Biology to
answer the question.
Abstract:
We derive measures for assessing the value of an
individual habitat fragment for the dynamics and persistence of a
metapopulation living in a network of many fragments. We demonstrate
that the most appropriate measure of fragment value depends on the
question asked. Specifically, we analyze four alternative measures:
the contribution of a fragment to the metapopulation capacity of the
network, to the equilibrium metapopulation size, to the expected time
to metapopulation extinction and the long-term contribution of a
fragment to colonization events in the network. The latter measure is
comparable to density-dependent measures in general matrix population
theory, though some differences are introduced by the fact that
"density dependence" is spatially localized in the
metapopulation context. We show that the value of a fragment depends
not only on the properties of the landscape but also on the properties
of the species. Most importantly, variation in fragment values between
the habitat fragments is greatest in the case of rare species that
occur close to the extinction threshold, as these species are likely
to be restricted to the most favorable parts of the landscape. We
expect that the measures of habitat fragment described and analyzed
here have applications in landscape ecology and in conservation
biology.
Copyright © 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
(Otso Ovaskainen and Ilkka Hanski. 2003. How much does an individual
habitat fragment contribute to metapopulation dynamics and
persistence? Theoretical Population Biology 64:481-95.)
One measure for the value of the patch was given by the
long-term contribution of a fragment to colonization events in the
network. How do the properties of a landscape and the properties of a
species affect the value of a patch? The value of the fragment depends
_____.
A) on the properties of the landscape and the properties
of the species
B) only on the properties of the landscape and not
on the properties of the species
C) not on the properties of the
landscape but only on the properties of the species
D) on neither
the properties of the landscape nor on the properties of the species
A
A population of white-footed mice becomes severely overpopulated in a
habitat that has been disturbed by human activity. Sometimes intrinsic
factors cause the population to increase in mortality and lower
reproduction rates to occur in reaction to the stress of
overpopulation. Which of the following is an example of intrinsic
population control?
A) Owl populations frequent the area more
often because of increased hunting success.
B) Females undergo
hormonal changes that delay sexual maturation, and many individuals
suffer depressed immune systems and die due to the stress of
overpopulation.
C) Clumped dispersion of the population leads to
increased spread of disease and parasites, resulting in a population
crash.
D) All of the resources (food and shelter) are used up by
overpopulation, and much of the population dies of exposure and/or starvation.
B
Based on the diagrams in the figure above and on the large population
of baby boomers in the United States, which graph best reflects U.S.
population in twenty years?
A) A
B) B
C) C
D) D
B
Which of the following statements regarding the future of populations
in developing countries are correct?
I) The fecundity is
predicted to increase.
II) Survivorship will increase.
III)
Overall population size will increase dramatically.
IV) The
number of offspring each year is predicted to remain high.
A) only I and III
B) only II and IV
C) only II, III,
and IV
D) only I, II, and III
C
Why does the 2009 U.S. population continue to grow even though the
United States has essentially established a zero population growth
(ZPG)?
A) emigration
B) immigration
C) baby boomer
reproduction
D) the 2007-2009 economic recession
B
What is a logical conclusion that can be drawn from the graphs above?
Developed countries have _____.
A) lower infant mortality rates
and lower life expectancy than developing countries
B) higher
infant mortality rates and lower life expectancy than developing
countries
C) lower infant mortality rates and higher life
expectancy than developing countries
D) higher infant mortality
rates and higher life expectancy than developing countries
C
A recent study of ecological footprints concluded that _____.
A)
Earth's carrying capacity would increase if per capita meat
consumption increased
B) current demand by industrialized
countries for resources is much smaller than the ecological footprint
of those countries
C) it is not possible for technological
improvements to increase Earth's carrying capacity for humans
D)
the ecological footprint of the United States is large because per
capita resource use is high
D
Which of the following statements about human population in
industrialized countries are correct?
I) Life history is
r-selected.
II) The population has undergone the demographic
transition.
III) The survivorship curve is Type III.
IV) Age
distribution is relatively uniform.
A) only I and III
B) only II and IV
C) only I, II, and
IV
D) only II, III, and IV
B
The following questions refer to the figure below, which depicts the
age structure of three populations.
Which population(s) appear(s) to be stable?
A) I
B)
III
C) I and II
D) II and III
B
Based on the figure above and given the populations of the following
countries, which country uses the most oil overall?
A) United
States (population = 320 million)
B) Canada (population = 36
million)
C) China (population = 1.33 billion)
D) Russia
(population = 144 million)
A
A population of squirrels on an island has a carrying capacity of 350
individuals. If the maximum rate of increase is 1.0 per individual per
year and the population size is 275, determine the population growth
rate (Round to the nearest whole number).
A) 59 squirrels per
year
B) -34 squirrels per year
C) 75 squirrels per
year
D) 15 squirrels per year
A