Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ecology (Bio110) – Spring 2017
Exam 3 – Study Guide
This study guide contains topics and information covered in class and through the course
readings. This is by no means exhaustive or complete, but should give you a good
starting point for synthesizing the information learned in class.
The First Eukaryotes (Protists)
- Protists
o Ecological importance and general life history traits
o Taxonomy in a state of transition
§ Kingdom Protista is gone
o Current Classification – protists fall into 7 eukaryotic supergroups
§ Know primary characteristics that place organisms into these groups
§ Know any additional important characteristics I highlighted for
certain lineages (for example red tide and bioluminescence in
Dinoflagellates, and phagocytosis in Excavata)
o Primary and secondary endosymbiosis
Critical Conversation: Antibiotic Resistance
- Be familiar with the assigned reading!
Plants and the Conquest of Land
- Ancestral protist lineage to land plants
o Charophyceans algae
- Key innovations for colonizing land
- General scheme of alternation of generations
o Haploid and diploid conditions
o Gametophyte and Sporophyte
o Gametes, fertilization and zygotes
o Processes of cellular division - Mitosis and Meiosis
o Be able to apply this general scheme to the plant lineages highlighting shifts
in the dominant stage over time.
- Alternation of generations in Charophyceans
o Dominant Haploid, Gametophytic stage
o Multicelled sporophyte evolved in plants (not a characteristic of protest
ancestors)
§ Why is this an important innovation for colonizing land and moving
across the landscape?
- Modern land plants (9 phyla)
o Fall into four umbrella groups
- Bryophytes
o Liverworts, Mosses and Hornworts
o Still need a moist habitat
o Alternation of Generations
§ Still a dominant haploid, multicelled gametophytic stage
Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ecology (Bio110) – Spring 2017
§ New innovation of a multicellular sporophyte
- Seedless Vascular Plants
o Lycophytes and Pteridophytes
o The innovation of vascularization
§ Lignin and tracheids
§ Why was this innovation SO important for the colonization of plants
further onto Earth’s landscape?
o Alternation of Generations
§ Major shift to dominant diploid, multicelled sporophytic stage
§ Haploid gametophyte heavily reduced
o Importance of seedless plants on early earth and the Kentucky connection
Gymnosperms and Angiosperms
- Gymnosperms
o The innovation of the seed
§ What is the advantage
§ Ovule and pollen both house the HIGHLY reduced gametophyte
(microscopic)
§ True dominance of sporophytic state
§ Seed composition - food supply for embryo
o Cycads, Ginkos, Conifers
o Vessel elements
- Angiosperms
o Dominant form of life on the planet today, but wasn’t always the case
o Seeds housed within a fruit
§ What’s the purpose of a fruit?
o Produce endosperm in the seeds
§ What is endosperm?
§ What is double fertilization and how does it work?
§ How does this differ from the contents within the seeds of
gymnosperms?
o Flowers
§ What are the primary male and female flower parts?
§ Perianth – petals and sepals
Introduction to the Fungi
- More closely related to animals or plants? Why?
- What Eukaryotic supergroup contains the fungi?
o What trait unites all member of this group?
- Know the five phyla that make up the kingdom fungi
o Know how to spell the names and the traits of members within each phylum
o Know the evolutionary innovations that groups exhibit throughout the tree
of life for fungi
- General fungal morphology
o Most have a cell wall
§ Cell wall has chitin (also produced by some animals)
Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ecology (Bio110) – Spring 2017
o Mycelium
o Hyphae
o Fruiting bodies
- How do hyphae grow?
o Cytoplasmic streaming and osmosis
o What role do vesicles play?
- Two forms of hyphae
o Septate and Aseptate
§ Know which phyla possess which type of hyphae
- Fungal reproduction
o Asexual
o Know the stages of fungal sexual reproduction using a fruiting body in detail
with associated terms
- Spore dispersal mechanisms
- General traits of fungal ecology
o Heterotrophic (saprophytic or decomposers, mutualistic, pathogenic)
- Fungal Diversity
o Chytrids
§ Basic traits including habitat, ecological role and an example
§ Role they play in amphibian decline
o Zygomycetes
§ Basic traits including habitat, ecological role and an example
§ Innovation of the zygosporangium; yolked hyphae
o Glomeromycetes (AM Fungi)
§ What are AM Fungi and what does their name refer to?
§ Basic traits including habitat, ecological role and an example
§ Importance for plant colonization of land
o Ascomycetes (sac fungi)
§ Basic traits including habitat, ecological role
§ Asci and ascospores
• Examples
o American Chestnut Blight
o Yeast
o Basidiomycetes (club fungi)
§ Basic traits including habitat, ecological role and an example
§ Basidium
§ Fruiting body components
• Examples
o Lichens
§ Symbiosis between which groups of organisms?
§ What resources are provided as part of this mutualism?
§ Three primary growth forms
Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ecology (Bio110) – Spring 2017
Introduction to Animal Diversity
- What Eukaryotic supergroup contains the animals?
o What trait unites all member of this group?
o Animals share a most recent common ancestor with which protest lineage?
o Animals have no cell wall
o All animals are multicellular
- Know main features morphological and developmental features under the
traditional classification method.
o Tissues and number of tissue layers
o Symmetry
o Protostome vs. Deuterostome
o True body cavity or not
o Lophophore production and Trochophore larvae
o You will need to be able to use these trait variations to separate out all of the
animal phyla we discussed up to this point in class (through protostome and
deuterostome development and the Acoela lineage).
- You will also need to know the basic biology of the lineages we covered in class, with
associated characteristics as highlighted on the power point slides.