Extras - Yearly Exam

Question 0

What is pollination?

Answer 0

Pollination is the transfer of pollen, containing the male sex cells, to the female sex cells in the ovary of a flower to allow internal fertilisation.

Question 1

Identify three mechanisms for successful reproduction?

Answer 1

Pollination, seed dispersal, asexual reproduction.

Question 2

How does pollination occur?

Answer 2

Wind, insects, birds and mammals.

Question 3

What is seed dispersal?

Answer 3

Seed dispersal is the spreading of the plants seeds.

Question 4

How does seed dispersal occur?

Answer 4

Explosion of a fruit, floating away, sticking to passing animals, digestion of the fruit, and they can be caught by the wind and carried away.

Question 5

What is asexual reproduction?

Answer 5

Asexual reproduction is a quick way for plants to reproduce and is very successful in unchanging environments.

Question 6

How does asexual reproduction occur?

Answer 6

Asexual reproduction only requires one parent. There is no need for elaborate mating ritual or the timing of spawning.

Question 7

What were Darwin’s observations in Australia?

Answer 7

Darwin commented on the similarity between marsupials and animals living in similar habitats in the northern hemisphere.

Question 8

What is convergent evolution?

Answer 8

This type of evolution produces organisms that look alike because they live in similar environments and therefore have the same selective pressures acting on them. Though they are not closely related.

Question 9

Discuss the ways in which developments in scientific knowledge may conflict with the ideas about the origins of life developed by different cultures.

Answer 9

Religious and cultural beliefs are not based on scientific beliefs. Scientific beliefs are based on evidence. Science looks for an explanation and as a result there is always conflict between cultural and scientific ideas.

Question 10

Give two examples of different cultural explanations for the origins of life.

Answer 10

The fundamental creationist viewpoint - earth was made by god in six days.

Aboriginal dreaming - the spirits created the earth and the animals and plants, and then the spirits joined with the earth.

Question 11

What does binomial mean?

Answer 11

Bi - two

Nomial - names

Question 12

In a binomial system, plants and animals are classified by their scientific name. Explain how this is done.

Answer 12

Scientific names consist of a genus name and a species name. Every organism has a genus or generic name spelt with a capital letter and a species or specific name spelt with a small later.

Question 13

State two reasons why it is difficult to classify extinct organisms.

Answer 13

Fossilisation and extinction.

Question 14

Why is it hard to use fossilisation to classify extinct organisms?

Answer 14

During fossilisation, most of the original animal is lost; only the hard parts of the organism are likely to be preserved.
The older the fossil the more likely it is that the material available will be insufficient for classification.

Question 15

Why does extinction make it difficult to classify extinct organisms?

Answer 15

It is not possible to compare a fossil to a living example of the species to see how it functioned and behaved. The classification of some organisms is not on the basis of their structural features but rather on how they reproduce or on the basis of their metabolism. This has caused many extinct organisms to have been mistakenly placed in the wrong group and later discoveries show they have been wrongly classified.

Question 16

What is a species?

Answer 16

Composed of related individuals that resemble one another.

Question 17

What does validity mean?

Answer 17

The extent to which the processes and resultant data measure what was intended.

Question 18

What does reliability mean?

Answer 18

Results must be more than just a one-off thing.

Question 19

What is a dependent variable?

Answer 19

What is being measured.

Question 20

What is an independent variable?

Answer 20

The variable that is manipulated in an experiment.

Question 21

Why is it important that we classify organisms?

Answer 21

Organisms that share common features are thought to also share a common ancestry. Extinct organisms that share common features with living organisms reflect evolutionary pathways. By classifying an organism, a judgement is made on the relationship between past and present day organisms.

Question 22

What are the abiotic characteristics of an aquatic environment?

6

Answer 22

The availability of oxygen
Temperature
Pressure variation
Viscosity
Light penetration
Availability of ions

Question 23

What are the abiotic characteristics if terrestrial environments

7

Answer 23

The availability of oxygen
Temperature
Pressure variation
Viscosity
Light penetration
Availability of ions
Buoyancy

Question 24

What is mutualism?

Answer 24

Both species benefit from the association.

Question 25

What is commensalism?

Answer 25

The presence of one species has a beneficial impact on the other, but is not itself affected by the association.

Question 26

What is exploitation?

Answer 26

One species benefits at the expense of another.

Question 27

What is parasitism?

Answer 27

Involves one species living on or in a host, the organism benefits while the host is harmed but not usually killed.

Question 28

What is allelopathy?

Answer 28

One species benefits by producing a compound which restrains the growth of another organism.