1. You scoop up a water sample from a local pond nearby, because you are curious about the possible microbes that might live there. After looking at several slides that held drops of the sample, you noticed two different kinds of cells: One kind was very small and had no separate internal structures; the other kind was much larger, and it contained several kinds of internal structures that were physically different from each other. Please name each cell and briefly describe their overall similarities and differences.
2. PKU (phenylketonuria) is an enzyme deficiency disease that only develops in individuals who are homozygous recessive for that gene. An individual with PKU has parents that do not have this disease. What is the parents' genotype for the gene responsible for PKU? What is the probability that they may have another child with PKU? How many future children of the affected individual will be carriers? Explain your answers.
3. Humans share 99% of their genes with chimpanzees, 90% with mice, 50% with fruit flies, and 37% with celery. Please explain the evolutionary significance of these data.
4. Describe the major land biome where you live. How have human activities changed the landscape and how has this affected native species? Include specific examples.
5. The habitat of one species of tropical fish is red coral reefs. The large majority of the fish in this population are red. A few individual fish carry a mutation that prevents the production of the red pigment; as a result these individual fish are white. The temperature of the ocean where these fish live gets warmer and warmer over a 10 year period, and as a result the coral is bleached and turns white. Use what you have learned about natural selection to explain how this bleaching event may have affected the evolution this fish population (not including possible direct effects of warmer temperatures on the fish). Include the following terms in your explanation: differential reproduction, beneficial trait, allele frequency, selection pressure, evolution.
Alternative to question 5:
At the beginning of the spring, Dr. Betty Burner notices that there is an equal distribution of long and short stemmed the dandelions in her backyard. By the end of the summer she notices that the majority of the dandelions have short stems. This observation is an example of what biological principle? Develop a hypothesis as to why there was an increase in the proportion of the short stemmed dandelions within the population.
6. You have read that inorganic fertilizers contribute to water pollution and would like to make a switch from inorganic fertilizers to organic compost in your vegetable garden. A friend graciously gives you a truck load of his compost. As a good researcher and critical thinker you are not convinced that organic compost will yield the same results as the inorganic fertilizer you have used for years with good results. To draw your own conclusion based on scientific evidence you decide to conduct an experiment in your garden. State a good hypothesis, design an experiment (include test subjects, sample size, control(s), dependent and independent variables, type of data collected) and hypothetical results/conclusion. Does your conclusion support the hypothesis?
Alternative to question 6:
If researchers establish that Myrotheciumverrucaria is an effective biological control agent against kudzu, they must then demonstrate that the pathogen will not harm desirable species such as soybeans (a close relative to kudzu). Describe an experiment that could fulfill this purpose, including all steps of the scientific method. Identify control(s), dependent and independent variables.
7. Use what you have learned about energy transfer in food chains and the second law of thermodynamics to explain why it is an environmentally good choice to eat a plant based diet. Include the following terms in your answer: producer, herbivore, omnivore, trophic level, resources and energy.