The Study Questions below are intended as a study tool. Write short answers to them using your lecture notes and textbook as references. After you have worked on them alone for awhile, I strongly recommend that you meet with other students in a study group to discuss the Study Questions and your answers. You may also raise these Study Questions in lecture and during meetings with me. Exam questions will be based on the correct and complete answers to the Study Questions.

1. Sperm and egg cells in humans are specialized for different roles in sexual reproduction. What are these different roles and how are sperm and eggs specialized for them?

2. In the human female, meiosis leads to three small polar bodies that die and one large egg cell. What is the value of this pattern of meiosis? Is it similar to meiosis in the male?

3. In the human embryo, where does energy for cell division and growth come from before and after implantation on the uterine wall?

4. How is regulation of meiosis by LH and FSH in the human male similar to the human female? How is it different? How do LH and FSH interact with estrogen and progesterone during ovulation?

5. How do the corpus luteum and later the placenta prevent ovulation during pregnancy? What is the adaptive value of doing so?

6. How does hormonal birth control prevent ovulation in women?

7. What is Human Chorionic Gonadotropin and what does it do? How would it's presence indicate a pregnancy had begun?

8. Use of hormonal contraception by women before menopause appears to reduce the risk of of ovarian and uterine cancers while continued use after menopause increases the risk of breast cancer. Can you explain this apparent contradiction?

9. What observations and logical assumptions does the theory of biological evolution try to explain?

10. Give a brief definition of biologicalevolution.

11. Sexual reproduction is biologically costly and dangerous yet it is widespread among living things. What adaptive value of sex might offset its cost and risk? How does sexual reproduction contribute to biological evolution? How might asexual reproduction (cloning) yield a population that was vulnerable to extinction?

12. Evolution has two parts: variation and selection. In general terms, what is the source of variation? How does the selection occur?

13. What kinds of mutations did we describe?

14. How does independent assortment combine Mom's genes with Dad's genes in your gametes? How does crossing over do the same thing but differently?

15. Selection is a filter through which the genetic diversity of a population passes. Explain this statement. Does selection create genetic diversity in a population?

16. Arnold Schwarznegger changed his body from that of a skinny youth to that of Mr. Universe by years of intense weight training. Will his children have larger muscles than he did as a child? How is this relevant to biological evolution?

17. How does micro-evolution differ from macro-evolution? How are they the same?

18. Contrast phyletic speciation with divergent speciation. What conditions might lead to phyletic speciation? What conditions might lead to divergent speciation?

19. After reproductive isolation, what two processes would tend to cause divergent speciation?

20. Describe allopatric speciation, which results from geographic isolation of two sub-populations. Is it divergent or phyletic? Give an example of how allopatric speciation might occur in nature.

21. What is polyploidy and what does it have to do with sympatric speciation in plants?

22. What sort of fossil evidence lead to the hypothesis of "punctuated equilibrium" for speciation?. How does it modify the previous view of speciation?

23. How are gene sequences and fossil evidence used to test hypotheses about the relationships between extinct organisms and extant organisms?

24. Name the six Kingdoms of life and a representative organism for each. Why do biologists put birds and fish in Kingdom Animalia but put corn plants in Kingdom Plantae?

25. Describe the important differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. What the important differences between Archebacteria and Eubacteria? How are these two prokaryotic groups beleived to be related to eukaryotes?

26. Thermophiles are Archebacteria that grow in hot environments. Diversa Corp. paid Yellowstone Park $25,000 annually for the right to take samples of thermophiles from hot springs. Why did they do this?

27. E. coli is a eubacterium that lives in your lower intestine and is mostly beneficial to you. What does E. coli do for you that is good? What is E. coli used for in medicine and biotechnology?

28. Cyanobacteria are Eubacteria that are photosynthetic. How were they important in the history of life on Earth? How are they believed to be related to modern plants and what is the evidence for this idea?

29. What are the basic components of a virus? How do viruses reproduce themselves? How can their reproduction make you ill?

30. In general, viruses can exhibit a lytic life cycle or a lysogenic life cycle. What is the difference?

31. Antibiotics are very effective against bacterial diseases. Antibiotics are generally not effective against viral diseases. Vaccinations are very effective against both. Explain.

32. More than 25 years ago, the Surgeon General of the U.S. stated that infectious diseases had been conquered by antibiotics and other therapies. Now antibiotic-resistant forms of bacterial diseases are a growing concern. How did the Surgeon General's ignorance of evolution lead to his misconception?

33. How do penicillin and vancomycin kill bacteria but not your cells?

34. Antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria are a growing threat to public health. What steps can be taken to slow their appearance and minimize their threat?

35. Poliovirus attacks human nerve cells. HIV attacks helper T cells of the human immune system. Many viruses attack bacteria, plants, and other animals but not humans. What causes different viruses to attack different kinds of cells?

36. HIV is not easily prevented by vaccination. What makes this so?

37. The anti-viral drug AZT inhibits HIV replication for a short time. How? After a time, AZT alone loses its effectiveness. How? Combinations of anti-viral drugs are more effective than single drugs in slowing the progress of AIDS. Explain.

38. A few percent of the human population appears to be immune to HIV infection. What gives these people immunity?

39. Give the typical sizes of the following cells in microns: a eukaryotic cells, prokaryotic cells, viruses. What is a micron?

40. Bacteria exhibit cell division by simple fission rather than mitosis. What makes mitosis unneccessary for bacteria?

41. Protistans are a diverse assemblage of living things that we grouped into heterotrophs and autotrophs. How are these two groups different? How are they thought to have differed in their evolution from prokaryotic ancestors?

42. What is the global significance of "phytoplankton", which include the diatoms and other single-celled, photosynthetic protists.

43. The Fungi are mostly multicellular eukaryotes that have a filamentous form. How does this form suit their way of feeding? Where would you find Fungi in your home?

44. We described plants as inflatable organisms. What is the advantage of this construction? How does it compensate for immobility? How do the central vacuoles and cell walls of plant cells allow them to be inflatable?

45. We described plants as linear organisms. How does this compensate for their immobility and contribute to the plant life strategy?

46. Animal cells lack chloroplasts and cell walls. How does this contribute to movement and eating? How is animal structure largely defined by the need to eat and to avoid being eaten?

47. What is a biological population? What is a gene pool?

48. Describe exponential growth of a population. What causes this pattern?

49. Exponential growth in a population slows when deaths increase. What are some "density-dependent" factors that can increase the death rate in a population? What are some density-independent factors that can increase death rate?

50. What is meant by the "carrying capacity" of an environment? What often occurs when a population far exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment?

51. In developed countries, the human death rate has decreased dramatically in the last 100 years. What caused this? What was the initial effect on human population growth? What caused the growth rate to slow again, e.g. in Europe?

52. What is the source of energy that drives the biosphere?

53. It takes roughly ten pounds of food to make one pound of consumer. What happens to the other nine pounds?

54. The biomass of producers is often much greater than the biomass of consumers. How is this related to food conversion efficiency?

55. An Iowa farmer plants 100 acres of soybeans that will be processed into oil and high-protein meal for human consumption. His neighbor plants 100 acres of corn that will be used to feed cattle that will then be processed into meat for human consumption. Which is the most efficient method of producing food for human consumption? Explain.

56. In an ecosystem, the level of a stable toxin like mercury or DDT can be thousands of times greater in the tissues of a top consumer than in the tissues of producers. How does this happen?

57. Burning coal, oil, and natural gas has been predicted to cause an increase in average global temperatures. What aspects of this hypothesis have been tested and proven true? What aspects are still uncertain?

58. A number of possible "feedbacks" make it difficult to predict how fast and ho high temperatures will rise in the next 100 years. Describe some of these.