Deck 13: Life in the Ocean

Question 1

What element is used to link nucleic acids in all organisms?

A) Carbon
B) Nitrogen
C) Silicon
D) Phosphorus

Answer 1

D
Phosphorus is also used to carry energy within the cell. Phosphorus enters the ocean via rivers and precipitation in organic form when organisms die. It then converts to phosphate for further use. Information can be found in the section Elements Cycle between Living Organisms and Their Surroundings.

Question 2

What organism usually fixes nitrogen into usable chemical forms?

A) Archaea
B) Extremophiles
C) Cyanobacteria
D) Dinoflagellates

Answer 2

C
Bacteria and Cyanobacteria usually fix nitrogen. Nitrogen is often a limiting factor in the ocean. Information can be found in the section Elements Cycle between Living Organisms and Their Surroundings.

Question 3

What open water zone is near shore and over the continental shelf?

A) Oceanic zone
B) Littoral zone
C) Hadal zone
D) Neritic zone

Answer 3

D
The neritic zone is a subsection of pelagic zones. Pelagic zones are those in open water. Information can be found in the section The Marine Environment is Classified in Distinctive Zones.

Question 4

What is a more accurate term for the feeding relationship of organisms?

A) Food chain
B) Food web
C) Trophic chains
D) Primary consumption

Question 5

What did Darwin suggest the driving force of evolution was?

A) Reproduction
B) Small genetic variation
C) Isolation
D) Large population size

Question 6

What is entropy?

A) The relative measure of disorder over time
B) The growth of an organism over time
C) The amount of energy transformation over a lifespan
D) The complexity of living organisms

Question 7

What is rarely a limiting factor for marine organisms?

A) Salinity
B) pH
C) Hydrostatic pressure
D) Nitrogen

Question 8

What biological chemical is important in heredity of traits?

A) Carbohydrates
B) Nucleic acids
C) Lipids
D) Proteins

Question 9

Most marine organisms are ____.

A) metabolic
B) endothermic
C) ectothermic
D) exothermic

Question 10

What is a heterotroph?

A) An organism that creates its own food
B) An organism that eat other organism
C) An organism the conducts chemosynthesis
D) An organism that remains plankton for its entire life

Question 11

What layer is permanently devoid of light?

A) Photic zone
B) Euphotic zone
C) Disphotic zone
D) Aphotic zone

Question 12

What inorganic nutrient is required for primary production?

A) Phosphorus
B) Carbonate
C) Oxygen
D) Iodine

Question 13

A salmon migrates from the ocean to freshwater rivers to spawn. What is the freshwater environment like for the salmon?

A) Hypertonic
B) Hypotonic
C) Isotonic
D) Equitonic

Question 14

What traps light energy in primary producers?

A) Photosynthetic
B) Thylakoid
C) Chlorophyll
D) Biomass

Question 15

What can increase the variation of genetic traits in a population?

A) Mutations
B) Adaptations
C) Natural selection
D) All of these choices

Question 16

What physical factor can denature or alter a proteins structure in a cell?

A) Phosphorus
B) Nitrogen
C) Light
D) Salinity

Question 17

How deep is the photic layer usually along the coasts?

A) 50 meters
B) 100 meters
C) 150 meters
D) 590 meters

Question 18

Which community has the highest level of net primary production?

A) Rain forests
B) Kelp forests
C) Coral reefs
D) Open ocean

Question 19

What is the largest biogeochemical cycle?

A) Global Carbon cycle
B) Global Nitrogen cycle
C) Global Phosphorus cycle
D) Global Silicon cycle

Question 20

Which zone is the deepest seabed zone?

A) Bathyal zone
B) Hadal zone
C) Littoral zone
D) Abyssal zone

Question 21

What is an advantage of using scientific names?

A) There is only one name per species.
B) They are universal to all languages.
C) They can indicate the relatedness of organisms.
D) All of these choices

Question 22

Once living organisms reach a balance with their environment, they do not undergo any more natural selection.

Question 23

What is the immediate organic material produced from inorganic substances?

A) Carbon dioxide
B) Proteins
C) Amino acids
D) Glucose

Question 24

What is convergent evolution?

A) Organisms that evolve to look similar due to environmental conditions
B) The natural selection applied to one population rather than another
C) The random alteration in genetic variation
D) Evolution due to geographical isolation

Question 25

Chemosynthesis is the main method of binding energy into carbohydrates on the planet.

Question 26

Which classification is so large it is considered a domain?

A) Monera
B) Plantae
C) Bacteria
D) Animalia

Question 27

Phytoplankton is responsible for the synthesis of 90% to 96% of the surface ocean's carbohydrates.

Question 28

Which is considered a physical factor?

A) Diffusion
B) Dissolved nutrients
C) Surface-to-volume ratio
D) Active transport

Question 29

Although ectotherms can tolerate large ranges in external temperature, they are unable to sustain large fluctuations in their internal temperatures.

Question 30

Some ____ are considered to be extremophiles.

A) Eukarya
B) Archaea
C) Plantae
D) Animalia

Question 31

A small cell having a high surface-to-volume ratio is more efficient than a large cell with a high volume-to-surface ratio.

Question 32

Why is iron not abundant in the ocean?

A) It is trapped in the Earth's crust.
B) It is held in sediments.
C) It is nearly insoluble in oxygenated water.
D) It is not very reactive.

Question 33

Linnaeus was the first to start classifying organisms.

Question 34

Freshwater animals exert large amounts of energy to transport water from their tissues back to the outside because they are hypertonic to their surroundings.

Question 35

What is needed for living matter to function?

A) Oxygen
B) Proteins
C) Energy
D) Sugars

Question 36

Most biological productivity in the ocean occurs in the euphotic zone.

Question 37

What kind of metabolic rate do humans have?

A) Endothermic
B) Exothermic
C) Ectothermic
D) Hyperthermic

Question 38

Living organisms represent the flow of energy towards decreasing order or chaos.

Question 39

The trace metal iron is required for photosynthesis and nitrogen fixing enzymes.

Question 40

What kind of movement of particles is able to move against normal concentration gradients?

A) Active transport
B) Diffusion
C) Osmosis
D) Dispersion

Question 41

What are trophic levels? Why is it better to eat organisms lower on the tropic pyramid?

Question 42

How are the levels of carbon dioxide linked to the photic and aphotic zones? How does this relate to the temperature of the water?

Question 43

What are Darwin's postulates of natural selection?

Question 44

Archaea may be more closely related to Eukarya than Bacteria.

Question 45

Coastal waters often support larger blooms of plankton than open water due to a high nitrate level in runoff.

Question 46

Taxonomy is the study of biological classification schemes.

Question 47

There is a much faster nutrient cycling rate on land from producers to consumers than in the ocean.

Question 48

All life on Earth is fundamentally the same.

Question 49

How does carbon enter the atmosphere? What effect does it have on Earth? How does it cycle back for use in biological components?

Question 50

What is the difference between an artificial system of classification and a natural system of classification? Which do we use today? Explain our current taxonomic system.