GEOG 442 Biogeography

Study Guide for Midterm

Check back a few times for any changes

 

This will be an open note, open text, and open computer test.

Look up each concept in your course notes, labs, textbook (Ch. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7), and, when all else fails, your favorite Internet search engine. Annotate the study guide below with a note about where you found the concept discussed. This will save you time during the test if you have to look something up.

• How are domesticated plants and animals similar to "superbugs" -- what's the common element in their evolution?
• What are biomes?
• Difference between forests and woodlands
• Five common forest types
• How can tropical rainforests be so complexly structured, biodiverse, and lush, even on poor tropical soils?
• What is the "summergreen" forest like? Appearance, seasonal behavior, biodiversity compared with tropical rainforests? Where can you find "summergreen" forests in terms of climate types and soils?
• Where does subtropical conifer forest dominate in terms of climate and soil?
• Where can West Coast marine forest be found and what is it like?
• Relative productivity of tropical rainforests and temperate forests
• Three common woodland types
• What is a scrubland?
• Locally, what are the two main forms of Mediterranean scrub called and how do they differ from one another?
• Which biomes are visually dominated by shrubs?
• Know the basic categories of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system (Af, Am, Aw; BWh, BWk, BSh, BSk; Csa, Csb, Cfa, Cfb; Dfa, Dfb, Dfc, Dfd; ET, EF)
• Why do affluent Americans live in chaparral-covered hillsides when the Mexicans, Spanish, and Native Californians before them avoid those hillsides?
• What is heath and where can it be found (climate zone)?
• Which biomes are visually dominated by the grass life-form?
• What are the differences between temperate steppe (short-grass prairie) and tall-grass prairie in appearance and general locations/climates?
• What are the differences among tropical desert, tropical steppe, and tropical savanna in appearance and general locations/climate types?
• Which climates are the most even in terms of temperatures and moisture over the course of the day and year?
• Why might temperate desert be a more challenging environment for plants than tropical desert?
• Raunkiaer's functional life-form classification: Main categories of plants
• Mammalian quadruped species richness trends going from south to north in North America (linear? quadratic? exponential dropoff? higher-order polynomial trend?)
• How do species reduce competition among themselves?
• Difference between phenotype and genotype
• Thermohaline circulation in the oceans
• Distribution of insolation averaged out over the whole year and by season
• What are some differences between Mars and Earth in terms of annual and seasonal insolation?
• Is insolation (and photosynthesis) the only power source for all Earth ecosystems?
• What is a cladogram? A geological area cladogram vs. a biological taxon-area cladogram?
• What kinds of data can you cram onto a climograph?
• What is symbiosis? How does it work in lichens? How about endosymbiosis inside eukaryotic cells (what were ribosomes, mitochondria, an d chloroplasts "back in the day" before eukaryotic cells?
• What would happen if environmental conditions begin to change beyond the conditions a plant or animal is adapted to? There are a couple of different possible outcomes, depending on the speed of change.
• Recognize how correctly to use the Latin binomal names
• Be able to use a complete classification of plants or animals in the Linnæan binomal nomenclature to figure out which species are more closely related to which others.
• How does the Linnæan binomal nomenclature and cladistics vary in terms of organizing the similarities among organisms.
• Sympatric speciation vs. allopatric speciation
• Divergent vs. vicariant diversification
• Speciation through polyploidy. What kinds of organisms are likelier to speciate in this way?
• Competitive exclusion principle and how two similar species might handle a new range overlap between them
• What is allelopathy? What does it do for a plant practicing it?
• Field spatial sampling: What is the difference between transect and quadrat sampling?
• What is the difference between stenotypy and eurytopy?
• Relic taxa: evolutionary relicts, climatic relicts, plate tectonic relicts and examples in the text of each
• Relict zones
• Endemism and its two types or causes: palaelig;oendemism and neoendemism. Examples of both in California.
• Clements and Gleason: views on what a plant community is
• How did Frederic Clements explain succession. What did he call the end-state of succession and how did he say it maintained itself? Why are chaparral and taiga challenging to his argument?
• Be able to compare and contrast the concepts of population, species, guild, community, ecosystem.
• Sampling biases that cause an isolated population to diverge from its source population (and can cause rapid speciation): gene/genetic drift, founder effect
• What is a clade?
• Go over the five species you were assigned to help speed things up at Sepulveda Dam. Which two were the most similar (and likely the hardest to keep straight in the field)? Be able to compare and contrast just these two most similar species in terms of how you would recognize them in the field.
• What is a biodiversity hotspot? Roughly how many are recognized today? Be able to identify two of them. What is really ironically weird about most of them?
• Be able to discuss basic trends in biodiversity in Central and North America. What is the main factor affecting biodiversity in a north-south direction? What is the second main factor that shows up especially well in east-west contrasts.

   
  

  

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  Document maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
  First placed on web: 08/25/02
  Last revision: 03/17/19