BIOL 103 Practice Questions for Test 1

For all math, SHOW YOUR WORK

For all short answer, GIVE SPECIFIC EXAMPLES.

  1. Captain Kirk leaves one Qwibble on the planet Qwohog, which has plenty of food and no predators.  If each Qwibble produces six offspring every eight hours (then the parent dies), how many Qwibbles will there be by the end of the week?  What is their doubling time?

  1. If a town of 10,000 people doubles every five years, how big will it be in 2026?  Suppose instead toxic waste contamination kills off 20% per year; how many will be left?

  1. Why does natural selection favor individuals who overpopulate their habitat and cause precipitous population decline?  What is the real reason the lemmings "jump in the sea"? Do the lemmings have alternatives? Explain.

  1. Jane Grey interviews a prospective student for the Westchester School for Mutants. The student is completely resistant to all forms of influenza, including swine flu, avian flu, and tribble flu. The condition is dominant and not X-linked. If this Mutant had a son, what is the son's chance of resisting next year's sandworm flu?

    Suppose we find that the rare individuals who inherit two copies of the flu Mutant allele have defective immune systems and die by age 20. How does this modify our definition of "dominant" inheritance for this

  1. Suppose the "kwisatz haderach" trait is determined by codominant alleles plus environmental influence. Can you explain Alia's unusual phenotype?
  2. What is the role of population size, gene frequencies, and genetic drift in evolution of new species? Explain.
  3. If natural selection means "survival of the fittest," than how can one "fittest" species evolve into more than one? How can more than one be "the fittest"? Explain.

  1. Explain how each of the following traits is determined by genes and/or environment: Huntington’s disease; Diabetes; Cancer; Spoken language.

  1. Explain the difference between genetic and cultural evolution.  Use an example to show how these may be confused.

  1. Suppose you ingest 500 Salmonella bacteria in contaminated turkey, and in three hours you feel sick; there are now 500,000 bacteria. What is their doubling time in your body, in minutes?

  2. A Klingon anthropologist tries to explain the pointed ears of Vulcans by the hypothesis that Vulcan women prefer men with more pointed ears, so many generations lead to Vulcans with extremely pointed ears.

    What form of natural selection does this illustrate? What problems do you see with the Klingon hypothesis? How might the hypothesis be modified?

  1. Compare and contrast the sandworm and the camel in terms of desert adaptation. Include (1) water use, (2) heat avoidance, (3) digestive chemistry.

  2. Based on your graph of water saturation: Suppose air that is raining at 40 degrees F warms up to 80 degrees F. What is the percent water saturation? How does the air feel?
  1. Suppose you have a dew collector on Dune that provides 12 liters per meter-squared per year.

    If Fremen need to drink 1.5 liters per day: How many square meters of collector would Fremen need to provide water for a sietch community of 25 people?

    Why do you think a dew collector on Dune would be less effective than the dew collector in Jerusalem?