exam 1

Question 1

what does the benedict’s test test for?

Answer 1

it is used to test for reducing sugars and turns brick red when positive

Question 2

what is the lugol’s test used for?

Answer 2

it is used to test for starches and turns from a yellow amber to a black participate when positive.

Question 3

what is used to test for the presence of proteins?

Answer 3

sodium hydroxide and copper sulfate is used to test for proteins, when positive the sample turns from blue to purple

Question 4

what is used to test for the presence of lipids?

Answer 4

Sudan IV is used to test for lipids, if positive the Sudan IV will dissolve and turn pink

Question 5

What are macromolecules?

Answer 5

they are carbohydrates, proteins, nucleic acid, and lipids. they all share a similar organization as they are composed of monomers linked together to form a polymer

Question 6

What are carbohydrates?

Answer 6

they are organic molecules made up of one or more sugars and are polymers made up of monosaccharide monomers. made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen

Question 7

why are carbohydrates important?

Answer 7

carbohydrates are important for energy storage and are used as building blocks for synthesizing other molecules. they are also used to indicate cell identity, store chemical energy, and form fibrous structural materials

Question 8

what are some common disaccharides?

Answer 8

sucrose, lactose, maltose

Question 9

what are storage polysaccharides in plants and animals?

Answer 9

plants store glucose in the form of starch and animals store simple sugars in the form of glycogen

Question 10

what are structural polysaccharides?

Answer 10

cellulose, starch, chitin, and peptidoglycans

Question 11

what are proteins?

Answer 11

they are organic molecules made up of amino acid subunits. their most important role is as enzymes and serving as metabolic catalysts that regulate the chemical reaction within cells

Question 12

what are some protein functions?

Answer 12

structural: hair, fingernails, horns
protective: coagulate blood
regulatory: control cell activity
movement: heart to pump, muscles to contract
transport: carry molecules around the body

Question 13

what are nucleic acids?

Answer 13

consists of a phosphate group, a five-carbon sugar, and a nitrogenous base. their monomer subunit is called a nucleotide

Question 14

how does nucleic acid vary?

Answer 14

they can have two different monomers: ribonucleotides or deoxyribonucleotides. they also have five different kinds of nitrogenous bases: purines (adenine, guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine, uracil, and thymine)

Question 15

what are lipids?

Answer 15

they are organic molecules that are generally hydrophobic. there are three different kinds: steroids, fats, and phospholipids. are defined by their solubility rather than chemical structure

Question 16

What are unsaturated fats?

Answer 16

they contain fewer than maximum number of hydrogen atoms that can be attached to the carbon skeleton. at room temperature they are liquid

Question 17

What are saturated fats?

Answer 17

they are saturated hydrocarbon chains that contain the maximum number of hydrogen atoms that can attach to the carbon skeleton. at room temperature they are solid.

Question 18

How does structure correlate with function?

Answer 18

the length of the digestive tract often correlates with their diet. in general, the alimentary canals, relative to their body size, are longer in herbivores/omnivores and are shorter in carnivores.

Question 19

What regulates the shape of trophic/energy pyramids?

Answer 19

they are shaped that way because energy is lost at every trophic level and only a fraction of the energy in a trophic level is available to be passed on in the food chain

Question 20

Why does available energy decrease in each successive trophic level?

Answer 20

Energy decreases as it moves up trophic levels because energy is lost as metabolic heat when the organism from one trophic level are consumed by organism from the next level

Question 21

What is top-down regulation?

Answer 21

species occupying the highest trophic level exerting a controlling influence on species at the next lower level and so forth down the trophic level

Question 22

What is bottom-up regulation?

Answer 22

a lower trophic level in the biological network affects the community structure of higher trophic levels by means of resource restriction

Question 23

How does energy flow through ecosystems?

Answer 23

Energy flow takes place via the food chain and food webs. Plants being the producers absorb sunlight and gain energy and when other animals eat those plants or other animals they gain a portion of their energy

Question 24

What is a nutrients cycle?

Answer 24

A system where energy and matter are transferred between living organisms and non-living parts of the environment. occurs as animals and plants consume nutrients found in the soil, and these nutrients are then released back into the environment via death and decomposition.

Question 25

What is an ecological population?

Answer 25

it is all the individuals of one species living within a specific area collectively; a subset of individuals of one species that occupies a particular geographic area

Question 26

What is an ecological community?

Answer 26

the set of all the species that occupy a given area and interact with each other either directly or indirectly

Question 27

What is the importance of niche size?

Answer 27

the position of a species within an ecosystem, describing both the range of conditions necessary for persistence of the species, and its ecological role in the ecosystem.

Question 28

what is natural selection?

Answer 28

indirect interaction where the predator enhances one or more inferior competitors by reducing the abundance of the superior competitor

Question 29

What is competition?

Answer 29

when organisms of two species use the same limited resource and have a negative impact on one another. (sp1-,sp2-)

Question 30

What is predation?

Answer 30

when a member of one species, the predator, eats all of part of the body of a member of another species prey (predator+,prey-)

Question 31

What is herbivory?

Answer 31

a special case of predation in which the prey species is a plant (plant-,herbicore+)

Question 32

What is parasitism?

Answer 32

a long-term, close association between two species in which one benefits and the other is harmed (pathogen+,host-)

Question 33

What is mutualism?

Answer 33

a long-term, close association between two species in which both partners benefit (sp1+,sp2+)

Question 34

what is the competition exclusion principle?

Answer 34

holds that no two species can long coexist sharing the same limiting resource

Question 35

what is coexistence?

Answer 35

framework to understand how competitors can maintain species diversity and starve-off competitive exclusion even among similar species living in ecologically similar environments

Question 36

What is evolutionary character displacement?

Answer 36

it is used to describe the evolutionary change that occurs when two similar species inhabit the same environment. under such conditions, natural selection favors a divergence in the characters morphology, echology, behavior, or physiology