Exam 53: The Physical Environment and Biogeography of Life

The largest level of organization, or scale, in ecological study is the _______.

A doe and her fawn live in a small forest.They move out to the forest edge and into a nearby field to feed, and they drink from a pond across the field or from a stream that runs out of the forest.Sometimes they venture across the highway to the forest on the other side.The interaction of these animals with several communities suggests they are living at what spatial scale?

A biome has the following characteristics: long, very cold winters; coniferous trees; mammals including moose, hares, and small rodents; and predators such as foxes and owls.This biome is the

Refer to the figure below, showing the tilt of Earth's axis as it revolves around the sun, causing changes in the seasons. Based on the diagram, which statement is true?

Humans have become important as environmental engineers, inadvertently changing the climate as they change the surrounding physical environment.Which of these human-caused changes is least likely to increase the temperature of the surrounding climate?

A survey of insects in a rainforest shows a very high species diversity, whereas a similar survey in a temperate deciduous forest shows a much lower species diversity.Scientists are interested in the processes that resulted in this difference in diversity.Which piece of evidence, if true, would most directly favor the "species diversification time" hypothesis?

Refer to the figure below. In this diagram, the precipitation curve falls below the temperature (yellow area).This indicates a situation in which plant growth is

A politician points to a recent blizzard as evidence that global temperatures are not rising.Is a major snowstorm valid evidence against climate change?

An ecologist is applying the theory of island biogeography to understand the result of fragmentation in an agricultural area, where the original prairie has been mostly replaced by cornfields and only a few small, isolated fragments of prairie remain.Is the ecologist justified in applying this theory? Why or why not?

In the temperate zone, between approximately 30° and 60° N and S latitudes, a circular air current occurs.Which movement of air at these latitudes causes wet climatic conditions?

All of these factors are determined by the amount of solar energy input received by Earth except

The trapping of heat energy from the sun by gases in Earth's atmosphere is important primarily because it results in Earth's ability to

Which aspect of ecology would an ecologist be likely to study today that an ecologist 150 years ago would not have studied?

A group of scientists wants to figure out how climate change has affected global precipitation rates in the past 50 years and then correlate this information with changes in global primary productivity.This study would be conducted at which level of organization?

Situations of habitat fragmentation in the Amazon rainforest suggest that the process of fragmentation is important in all ecosystems because it

The island of Madagascar, off the southern African coast, has a highly unique endemic biota.Roughly 170 million years ago, Madagascar was landlocked in the middle of the supercontinent Gondwana.Gondwana eventually split by continental drift, forming Africa, South America, India, Australia, and Antarctica.For the past 88 million years, Madagascar has been isolated, but some new species can still reach the island from the coast of Africa.This suggests that the evolution of Madagascar's unique biota is

Climate change is one of the most serious problems of the twenty-first century.Should issues related to climate change be considered the responsibility of environmentalists, ecologists, or both?

According to the experiments of Lovejoy and colleagues, the rate at which a fragment lost species diversity was greatest in the _______ fragments.

In the past 40 years, 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed.The forest is still being lost at a rate of 20,000 square miles per year.What changes in world climate are we likely to see as this deforestation continues?

All of these statements correctly describe factors involved in atmospheric circulation patterns except