1. What is the difference between a native species and a non-native species?

2. Why are non-native species sometimes destructive in their new habitats? What is missing in those new habitats that was in their old habitats?

3. Can exotic species also be beneficial to people? If so, give examples.

4. Define biogeography and biodiversity.

5. What is a species?

6. Describe the generalized spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity with respect to latitude, island size, and seasons.

7. What is evolution? Describe the basic steps of the process and explain how it works.

8. What is a population? Provide biogeographic examples that result from evolution once populations are geographically isolated.

9. What is convergent evolution?

10. What is divergent evolution?

11. What are biogeographic regions and how do they form?

12. Compare the terms niche and habitat. Why do species with a narrow niche usually have limited geographic ranges?

13. What does it mean to say that an organism is endemic to a place? What factors would cause an organism to be endemic?

14. What is a limiting factor? Give examples of physical and biological limiting factors. Explain how each acts to limit the range of a species.

15. What is Allen’s rule? How does it relate to limiting factors?

16. What adaptations do many cacti have to cope with life in the desert?

17. What is a keystone species? Give an example. How does the concept of a keystone species relate to limiting factors?

18. What is mutualism? Give examples of it. How can it be a limiting factor for a given organism?

19. In the context of biogeography, what is dispersal? Why do organisms disperse?

20. By what means do plants and animals disperse?

21. What barriers present resistance to dispersal? Compare the relative ease or difficultly of dispersing to islands close to the mainland and far away from it.

22. Compare colonization and invasion. How does the cattle egret exemplify both concepts?

23. What is ecological disturbance? What causes it?

24. Review the importance of fire to western North American forests. What problem has developed? What is being done to address it?

25. What is ecological succession? What causes it? What are seres?

26. What is a climax community? Is this model always accurate?

27. What three hierarchies are used to organize the biosphere? Explain what each is based on.

28. What are trophic levels? Where do producers and consumers fit in? What is a tertiary consumer?

29. Compare a food chain with a food web. Which is more representative of the real world?

30. What is the 10% rule in relation to trophic levels?

31. What types of consumers recycle dead organisms?

32. What are homologous traits? How are they used to create taxonomic groups?

33. Compare common names and scientific names. On what is each based? How is each type of name useful?

34. What is a community? How is the term defined? Give examples of a few communities.

35. What is the carbon cycle? What is the nitrogen cycle? How do they work? Why are they important?

36. Is Cocos the genus or the species name for the coconut palm?

37. What are the two basic varieties of coconut palm and where did each originate?

38. The coconut uses two main modes of dispersal. What are they?

39. Where did Austronesians disperse the coconut? Where did Europeans disperse it?

40. What are the two primary limiting factors controlling the coconut’s geographic range?

41. What is artificial selection? How does it relate to domestication? How does the coconut illustrate the process of artificial selection?

42. Describe the ecological relationship between humans and the coconut.