Section 1
The role of an organism within the ecosystem.
What is niche?
Populations can increase very quickly in this type of reproduction.
What is asexual reproduction?
This describes a trait, like human blood type or handedness, that falls into a few distinct categories.
What is discrete variation?
Humans choose the best individuals to pass desirable traits to their offspring in this process.
What is artificial selection?
Scars, calluses, and the ability to play the piano are examples of this type of characteristic, which cannot be passed on to offspring.
What are non-heritable characteristics?
The well-studied population cycles of the snowshoe hare and the Canada lynx are a famous example of this ecological interaction.
What is predation?
The process where two haploid gametes combine to form a single, diploid cell.
What is fertilization?
A trait that is always expressed, or visible, whenever its corresponding allele is present, even if only one copy is inherited.
What is a dominant trait?
The biggest threat to species survival, this is the main result of deforestation, pollution, and urban development.
What is habitat loss?
This is the full name that describes molecules of DNA.
What is deoxyribonucleic acid?
These areas have the least amount of biodiversity on Earth.
What are the poles?
This simple type of asexual reproduction, common in bacteria and amoeba, involves the cell splitting directly into two nearly equal-sized daughter cells.
What is binary fission?
These specialized reproductive cells, like sperm and egg, each contain half the number of chromosomes of a normal body cell.
What are gametes?
The status of the grizzly bear, which lives in the Rocky Mountains but no longer lives in the prairies of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
What is extirpation?
One major disadvantage of artificial selection is that it reduces this within a population, making the entire group more vulnerable to new diseases or pests.
What is genetic variation?
The panda's diet of almost exclusively bamboo makes it a good example of a species that occupies this type of niche.
What is narrow niche?
High genetic variation is vital for a species because it increases the chances of survival when this happens.
What is environmental change?
This type of cell is produced by mitosis, meaning it contains a full set of chromosomes and is genetically identical to the parent cell.
What is a diploid/somatic/body cell?
This process involves modifying an organism's genetic material, often to introduce new traits or remove unwanted ones.
What is genetic engineering?
The term for the first diploid cell formed immediately after fertilization, which will then undergo cleavage to develop into an embryo.
What is a zygote?
Barnacles on a whale are usually harmless, but if they become so heavy that they create "drag" and force the whale to use more energy to swim, the relationship becomes this.
What is parasitism?
This sticky, receptive tip of the pistil is designed to trap and hold the pollen grains transferred from the anther.
What is the stigma?
These X-shaped thread-like structures consist of a single molecule of DNA coiled tightly together.
What is a chromosome?
This famous animal was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult body cell in 1996.
Who is Dolly the sheep?
These are the four nitrogenous bases that make up the "rungs" of the "ladder" of a strand of DNA.
What are adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine?