What is an adaptive advantage of recombination between linked genes?
A) Recombination is required for independent assortment.
B) Recombination must occur or genes will not assort independently.
C) New allele combinations are acted upon by natural selection.
D) The forces on the cell during meiosis II results in recombination.
Use the information in the following paragraph to answer the question(s) below.
A hypothetical bacterium swims among human intestinal contents until it finds a
suitable location on the intestinal lining. It adheres to the intestinal lining using a
feature that also protects it from phagocytes, bacteriophages, and dehydration. Fecal
matter from a human in whose intestine this bacterium lives can spread the bacterium,
even after being mixed with water and boiled. The bacterium is not susceptible to the
penicillin family of antibiotics. It contains no plasmids and relatively little
peptidoglycan.
The cell also lacks F factors and F plasmids. Upon its death, this bacterium should be
able to participate in _____.
A) conjugation
B) transduction
C) transformation
D) conjugation and transduction
The experimental approach taken in current biological investigations presumes that
_____.
A) simple organic compounds can be synthesized in the laboratory from inorganic
precursors, but complex organic compounds like carbohydrates and proteins can be
synthesized only by living organisms
B) a life force ultimately controls the activities of living organisms and this life force
cannot be studied by physical or chemical methods
C) living organisms are composed of the same elements present in nonliving things,
plus a few special trace elements found only in living organisms or their products
D) living organisms can be understood in terms of the same physical and chemical laws
that can be used to explain all natural phenomena
In a bacterium that possesses antibiotic resistance and the potential to persist through
very adverse conditions, such as freezing, drying, or high temperatures, DNA should be
located within, or be part of, which structures?
1. nucleoid region
2. endospore
3. fimbriae
4. plasmids
A) 1 and 2 only
B) 1 and 4 only
C) 2 and 4 only
D) 1, 2, and 4
You are out working in your garden, and you notice that one of your favorite flowering
plants has black, dead spots on the leaves. You immediately suspect that the plant has
been invaded by a pathogen and has initiated a(n) _____.
A) avirulence response
B) hypersensitive response
C) resistance response
D) virulence response
Refer to the metabolic pathway illustrated above. If A, B, and C are all required for
growth, a strain mutant for the gene-encoding enzyme B would be able to grow on
medium supplemented with _____.
A) nutrient A only
B) nutrient B only
C) nutrient C only
D) nutrients A and C
The accumulation of free oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere began with the origin of _____.
A) life and respiratory metabolism
B) cyanobacteria using photosystem II
C) chloroplasts in photosynthetic eukaryotic algae
D) land plants
The most plausible hypothesis to explain why species richness is higher in tropical than
in temperate regions is that _____.
A) tropical communities are younger
B) tropical regions generally have more available water and higher levels of solar
radiation
C) higher temperatures cause more rapid speciation
D) tropical regions have very high rates of immigration and very low rates of extinction
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
The following table depicts characteristics of five prokaryotic species (A-E). Use the
information in the table to answer the question(s) below
Which species are capable of directed movement?
A) species A
B) species B
C) species C
D) species D
Familial hypercholesterolemia is characterized by _____.
A) defective LDL receptors on the cell membranes
B) poor attachment of the cholesterol to the extracellular matrix of cells
C) a poorly formed lipid bilayer that cannot incorporate cholesterol into cell membranes
D) inhibition of the cholesterol active transport system in red blood cells
The greatest number of endemic species is expected in environments that are _____.
A) easily reached and ecologically diverse
B) isolated and show little ecological diversity
C) isolated and ecologically diverse
D) easily reached and show little ecological diversity
Which of the following is an example of monosomy?
A) Turner’s syndrome
B) Klinefelter’s syndrome
C) Down syndrome
D) trisomy X
Which of the following is NOT true? Both chloroplasts and mitochondria _____.
A) have their own DNA
B) have multiple membranes
C) are part of the endomembrane system
D) are capable of reproducing themselves
With what other idea of his time was Cuvier’s theory of catastrophism most in conflict?
A) the scala naturae
B) the fixity of species
C) island biogeography
D) uniformitarianism
You need to represent a molecule to best illustrate the relative sizes of the atoms
involved and their interrelationships. Which representation would work best?
A) molecular formula
B) structural formula
C) ball-and-stick model
D) space-filling model
Which statements about dispersal are correct?
I) Dispersal is a common component of the life cycles of plants and animals.
II) Colonization of devastated areas after floods or volcanic eruptions primarily depends
upon climate.
III) Seeds are important dispersal stages in the life cycles of most flowering plants.
IV) Dispersal occurs only on an evolutionary time scale.
A) only I and III
B) only II and IV
C) only I, II, and IV
D) only II, III, and IV
What would be the most effective method of reducing the incidence of blood flukes in a
human population?
A) reduce the mosquito population
B) reduce the population of the intermediate snail host
C) avoid contact with rodent droppings
D) carefully wash all raw fruits and vegetables
Which of the following statements best describes the effect of climate on biome
distribution?
A) Average annual temperature and precipitation are sufficient to predict which biome
will be found in an area.
B) Seasonal fluctuation of temperature is not a limiting factor in biome distribution if
areas have the same annual temperature and precipitation means.
C) The average climate and pattern of climate are important in determining biome
distribution.
D) Correlation of climate with biome distribution is sufficient to determine the cause of
biome patterns.
Which of the following are compounds?
A) H2O, O2, and CH4
B) H2O and O2
C) O2 and CH4
D) H2O and CH4, but not O2
Which of the following is most likely to have a small protein called ubiquitin attached
to it?
A) a cyclin protein, that usually acts in G1, in a cell that is in G2
B) a cell surface protein that requires transport from the ER
C) an mRNA leaving the nucleus to be translated
D) an mRNA produced by an egg cell that will be retained until after fertilization
The motor cortex is part of the _____.
A) cerebrum
B) cerebellum
C) spinal cord
D) medulla oblongata
Which of the following might result in a human zygote with 45 chromosomes?
A) an error in either egg or sperm meiotic anaphase
B) failure of the egg nucleus to be fertilized by the sperm
C) failure of an egg to complete meiosis II
D) incomplete cytokinesis during spermatogenesis after meiosis I
What adaptations should one expect of the seed coats of angiosperm species whose
seeds are dispersed by frugivorous (fruit-eating) animals, as opposed to angiosperm
species whose seeds are dispersed by other means?
1. The exterior of the seed coat should have barbs or hooks.
2. The seed coat should contain secondary compounds that irritate the lining of the
animal’s mouth.
3. The seed coat should be able to withstand low pHs.
4. The seed coat, upon its complete digestion, should provide vitamins or nutrients to
animals.
5. The seed coat should be resistant to the animals’ digestive enzymes.
A) 4 only
B) 1 and 2
C) 2 and 3
D) 3 and 5
In vertebrate animals, spermatogenesis and oogenesis differ in that _____.
A) oogenesis begins at the onset of sexual maturity, whereas spermatogenesis begins
during embryonic development
B) oogenesis produces four functional haploid cells, whereas spermatogenesis produces
only one functional spermatozoon
C) cytokinesis is unequal in oogenesis, whereas it is equal in spermatogenesis
D) oogenesis ends at menopause, whereas spermatogenesis is finished before birth
Translation requires _____.
A) mRNA, tRNA, DNA, and rRNA
B) mRNA, DNA, and rRNA
C) mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA
D) mRNA, tRNA, and DNA
A friend of yours calls to say that his car would not start this morning. He asks for your
help. You say that you think the battery must be dead. If so, then jump-starting the car
from a good battery will solve the problem. In doing so, you are _____.
A) testing a theory for why the car will not start
B) making observations to inspire a theory for why the car will not start
C) stating a hypothesis and using that hypothesis to make a testable prediction
D) comparing multiple hypotheses for why the car will not start
The first cavity formed during frog development is the _____.
A) blastopore
B) mouth
C) blastocoel
D) anus
Which of the following has the greatest effect on the rate of chemical cycling in an
ecosystem?
A) the ecosystem’s rate of primary production
B) the production efficiency of the ecosystem’s consumers
C) the rate of decomposition in the ecosystem
D) the trophic efficiency of the ecosystem
On the back of your skull you can feel a small bump, below which is an opening where
the spinal cord enters the skull. The location of this opening toward the bottom of the
skull is significant in evolutionary biology for what reason?
A) It allowed for the hominin brain to grow much larger than other primates.
B) It provided greater protection for the spinal cord.
C) It occurred as a result of the change to a bipedal stance.
D) This change was necessary for the increase in size from prosimian forms to
anthropoid forms.
Among plants known as legumes (beans, peas, alfalfa, clover, for example) the seeds
are contained in a fruit that is itself called a legume, better known as a pod. Upon
opening such pods, it is commonly observed that some ovules have become mature
seeds, whereas other ovules have not. Thus, which of the following statements is (are)
true?
1. The flowers that gave rise to such pods were not pollinated.
2. Pollen tubes did not enter all of the ovules in such pods.
3. There was apparently not enough endosperm to distribute to all of the ovules in such
pods.
4. The ovules that failed to develop into seeds were derived from sterile floral parts.
5. Fruit can develop, even if all ovules within have not been fertilized.
A) 1 and 5
B) 2 and 4
C) 2 and 5
D) 3 and 5
Which of the following terms encompasses all of the others?
A) heterotrophs
B) herbivores
C) carnivores
D) primary consumers
Resource partitioning would be most likely to occur between _____.
A) sympatric populations of species with similar ecological niches
B) sympatric populations of a flowering plant and its specialized insect pollinator
C) allopatric populations of the same animal species
D) allopatric populations of species with similar ecological niches
Which of the following is NOT a polymer?
A) glucose
B) starch
C) cellulose
D) DNA
You are weeding your garden when you accidentally expose some roots of your pea
plants. You notice swellings (root nodules) on the roots and there is a reddish tinge to
the ones you accidentally damaged. Most likely your peas plants_____.
A) suffer from a mineral deficiency
B) are infected with a parasite
C) are benefiting from a mutualistic bacterium
D) are developing offshoots from the root