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• Study Guide for Fall 2009 IB426 Exam I
• Formation of Planet Earth, Origin of Life, and Major Speciation Events
Nebula hypothesis of planetary formation
How did planet Earth form? (melting Æ differentiation)
Age of Earth; how did Earth’s moon form?
What is stromatolite?
Age of first life
Age of first Eukaryote
Implication of L-isomer of amino acid in origin of life.
What are the hypotheses of the origin of life? Inference from Universal Tree of Life (Woese),
o and Reticulate Tree of Life (Doolittle and others).
Ring of Life (Rivera & Lake) – what is the inference from whole genome sequences regarding
o the origin of eukaryote?
What is “endosymbiosis” in the context of evolution of life? What were involved in the two major
endosymbiotic events that led to the formation of mitochondria and chloroplast?
What is chanoflagellate?
What is Cambrian Explosion and when did it occur?
How were mass extinction events at boundaries of Periods and/or Era of Earth’s history
o important in animal speciation?
Which is the largest invertebrate group of animals?
Which is the largest vertebrate group of animals?
• Contrast between comparative physiology, environmental/ecological physiology and evolutionary
physiology.
Definition of acclimation and acclimatization.
Definition of evolutionary adaptation – how does it occur?
What is phenotypic plasticity? Is it heritable?
Example of short term compensatory response vs adaptation over evolutionary time.
Range of environments.
• Isometry and allometry
Do surface area and volume (volume .body size) of an animal increase at the same rate as the animal
grows bigger? If they don’t, why are the rates different?
Isometric scaling factor – what is it, and how is it derived?
Why does allometric scaling mean?
What is the smallest vertebrate animal? What is the largest? How many orders of magnitude different in
size are they?
Why a mouse cannot be scaled isometrically to the size of an elephant and produce a
physiologically functional animal?
• Water properties and water walker/runner.
What are the 2 important physical properties of water and some examples of their relevance to
biochemical and physiological function.
Colligative effect – relationship between solute concentration and osmotic pressure
How do water striders remain stationary on the water surface? What force/s support them? How does the
equation: MC = Mg /
F
P apply? What do the terms in the equation represent?
All 342 species of water striders over 3 orders of magnitude of body size studied by Hu et al (2003) can
remain stationary on the water surface. Why? What’s the rate of leg length growth versus rate of body
size growth?
What is Denny’s Paradox in regard to water strider?
What is momentum transfer, and how is it achieved by water strider to move across water?
