Exam 1: Studying Life

Once a phylogenetic tree has been constructed,

Suppose a space probe is successful in discovering a living organism on a distant planet.Which would be the best approach to collect data that would show whether this organism shares a common origin with Earth organisms?

Analyze the following question to determine whether it is a scientific question or a non-scientific question, and explain why: What causes cancer?

During development, cells in a human embryo divide and take on varying shapes and functions.For example, some embryonic cells divide and become osteoclasts while others become osteoblasts, two types of cells that make up bone.This process is called _______.

Imagine that NASA's next probe to one of Jupiter's moons takes a sample from one of its methane lakes.Pictures taken under a microscope reveal a cell-like structure remarkably similar to that of a simple prokaryotic organism.NASA calls it a "Xenop." Based on the textbook's discussion of the common aspects of living organisms on Earth, which of the following pieces of information about the Xenop is paired with its logical conclusion?

Which of the following is not a feature of scientific hypotheses?

Refer to the table below. A student created the table to categorize various scenarios as representing science or non-science.Which statement best evaluates the student's table?

Refer to the figure below. The Cnidaria are simple marine animals that have either of the two basic body plans shown in the figure.You may be familiar with sea anemones, which have the body plan shown on the left, and you are likely familiar with jellyfish, which have the body plan shown on the right.What feature shared by both of these cnidarians could have been important in providing the conditions that enabled the rise of multicellularity on Earth?

If samples were brought back from a distant planet, which would be the first evidence of life in them, assuming their evolution followed the same path as on Earth?

Why is it important in science to design and perform experiments that are capable of falsifying a hypothesis?

Refer to the table below. A biologist studied plant growth using two plant species grown over a 2-week period.For each species, 20 plants were used, randomly split into control and experimental groups.Except for CO₂ exposure, conditions were identical for all plants.The table summarizes results as average height increase, along with a plus/minus value indicating the range of individual plant heights measured.Which is the null hypothesis that would be developed when using statistics to analyze these results?

Which statement about aerobic metabolism is false?

The use of energy from sunlight to synthesize complex molecules is known as _______.

A species consists of

A researcher collected frog and water samples from eight widely separated sites across the United States and studied the incidence of abnormalities in frogs exposed to different levels of the herbicide atrazine.This was a(n) _______ experiment.

According to current thinking about the rise of life on Earth, what two critical types of molecules evolved in what order before the first primordial cells formed?

A Pacific tree frog has the scientific nomenclature Hyla regilla.This particular tree frog belongs to the genus _______.

Darwin referred to the differential reproductive success of individuals with particular variations as

After observing new data, scientists apply _______ logic in order to propose a possible explanation, which is called a hypothesis.

Genome sequencing and other molecular techniques have allowed biologists to study the evolution and classification of life's diverse organisms.By examining the fossil record and by identifying similarities and differences among living species, they have been able to construct _______ trees to diagram evolutionary relationships.