GEOG/ES&P 330
California Ecosystems
Midterm study guide
Here are items to look up in your notes, the course home page, labs, and readings. If you recognize all of them, you should be fine going into the midterm.
- What is a biodiversity hotspot? California is one of these. Why? What makes California so very biodiverse?
- Difference between transects and quadrats
- What is a floristic key and how does it work?
- Alpha diversity, beta diversity, and gamma diversity
- What is the main advantage and the main shortcoming of using species richness (e.g., alpha and gamma diversity) as a measure of biodiversity?
- Leaves
- Simple vs. compound leaves
- Alternate, opposite,and whorled leaf arrangements
- Leaf margins: entire, lobed, toothed, crenulate, dentate, serrate, spinose
- Leaf shapes: linear, lanceolate, elliptical, oblong, etc.
- Leaf texture: membranous vs. sclerophyllous
- Leaf surfaces: glabrous, glaucous, pubescent and puberulent, hispid, nettlesome, tomentose, glandular/viscid
- Flowers:
- Perianth
- Calyx
- Sepals
- Corolla
- Petals
- Corolla shape: cylindrical, funnelform, salverform, rotate, campanulate, urceolate
- Corolla symmetry: regular, irregular (two-lipped, papilionaceous)
- Pistils: stigma, style, ovary
- Stamens: anthers, filaments
- Exserted vs. included stamens and pistils
- Gender in flowers:
- Perfect flowers
- Pistillate or carpellate flowers
- Staminate flowers
- Gender in plants:
- Androgenous plants
- Monoecious plants
- Dioecious plants
- Polygamous plants
- Inflorescences:
- Florets vs. flowers
- Indeterminate vs. determinate inflorescences
- Spike, catkin, spadix
- Raceme, panicle, corymb, umbel
- Cyme
- Thyrse
- Composite heads: radiate, ligulate, discoid
- Solitary flowers: terminal, axial
- Bracts, spathes, involucres, phyllaries
- Fruits vs. seeds
- Fleshy fruits: drupes, accessories, aggregates, multiple fruits, berries, pepos, pomes
- Dry fruits: samaras, achenes, caryopses, follicles, legumes, siliques/silicles, capsules
- Why are some fruits so juicy and tasty and others are dry?
- Herbaria
- What is an herbarium?
- What was the traditional scientific use of herbarium collections?
- How has digitizing them and placing them online changed their uses?
- Coastal habitats: beaches, dunes, bluffs, and terraces
- Why are beaches and dunes so challenging for plants?
- What are some ways that beach and dune plants adapt to their difficult habitat?
- Mediterranean scrub
- What is CSS?
- What is chaparral?
- How do CSS and chaparral resemble one another and how do they differ?
- What are the three main types of Southern California CSS and where are they found? Annoyingly, there are two different sets of names for the three subtypes, one descriptive and the other focussing on geographical location. You need to know both systems and how the three categories of each system roughly map to the three categories in the other system.
- Succession (Clements' original description and mechanism)
- Fire follower
- Nitrogen fixation and why it's a challenge in chaparral. Which group of shrubs are good nitrogen-fixers in chaparral?
- Why, on the other hand, does CSS not do well with nitrogen fertilization? (native plant nurseries will tell you NOT to fertilize CSS species in your garden)
- Deciduousness
- What is facultative summer deciduousness?
- How does facultative summer deciduousness differ from winter deciduous (other than the season)?
- Where are most classic winter-deciduous species found in California?
- How do these winter deciduous species "get away" with it in a region with an intense and protracted summer drought?
- Sepulveda Dam basin
- What were the native tree species we encountered in the Sepulveda Dam Basin?
- What were the invasive exotic annual forbs we encountered out there and could identify despite their being dead and dried out?
- What were the three invasive annual exotic grasses we were able to recognize out there?
- What were the half dozen or so native shrub species we encountered?
- Using GPS depends on understanding uncertainty. Which dimension (latitude, longitude, or altitude) is the most variable from one unit to another and, thus, most uncertain/least reliable?
- Each of you became the local expert in six Sepulveda Dam native species, whether you went on the trip or not: Be able to describe the most obvious differences and similarities among just these species