Home assignment
Chapter 13
Organism and Population
1. Who is the Father of ecology In India? What was his contribution in the study of ecology?
2. When was ministry of environment and forests established in India? How it was formed?
3. Define ecology. How will you define ecology at organism level?
4. What is the significance of why type questions?
5. What is the significance of how-type questions?
6. Why are night-blooming flowers generally white?
7. How do birds communicate with its mate during breeding season?
8. How does the bee know which flower has nectar?
Research Scientists at University of Bristol England studied that plants generally have a
negative electrical charge and emit a weak electrical signal it is also known for years that bees
flapping wings create a positive electrical charge of up to 200 volts as they flit from flower to
flower. Bumblebees can sense the electric field that surrounds a flower. They can even
distinguish between fields produced by different floral shapes, or use them to work out whether
a flower has been recently visited by other bees. Flowers aren’t just visual spectacles and
smelly beacons. They’re also electric billboards. There is one bee whose job consists of
searching nectar in flowers. Once this bee finds the flower, he does figure-eight bee dance that
signals that he has found nectar flower for the rest.
9. What are the four levels of ecology?
10. Inspite of living in one type of biome, we can find a wide variety of habitats. Why? What are
the key elements for such variations?
11. Which type of organisms resides in our intestine?
12. Explain the term ‘habitat’.
13. How does the temperature varies when we move from equator towards poles and from
mountain tops towards plains?
14. Give reason for the occurrence of distinct seasons on earth.
15. What is precipitation? How it affect the biome distribution on earth?
16. Name the key elements which lead to variation in physical and chemical conditions of different
habitats.
17. Draw and explain the biome distribution with respect to annual temperature and precipitation.
18. Give five examples for unique habitats existing on this earth.
19. Write the difference between
(a) Eurythermal and stenothermal
(b) Euryhaline and stenohaline
(c) Diapause and aestivation.
(d) Migration and suspension
(e) Diapauses and hibernation
(f) Aestivation and hibernation
20. How light is an important factor to determine the ecology of an area? Explain giving examples.
21. How water holding capacity and percolation is determined?
22. What determines the type of benthic animals in any aquatic environment?
Biology XII
23. Define homeostasis.
24. What are regulators? Give examples.
25. Give reason why the conformers had not evolved to become regulators?
26. Why snow leopards are not found in Kerala forests and tuna is rarely caught beyond tropical
seas?
27. What is allen’s rule?
28. On which factor the productivity and distribution of plants depends?
29. Why small animals are not or rarely found in Polar Regions?
30. In winter season, we tend to shiver, Give reason. What is the type of adaptation possessed by us
in this regard?
31. Many foreign birds are seen in India during winter season. Why do they visit India during
winter season only and name the phenomenon responsible for this.
32. How North American kangaroo rat is meets its water requirement in the absence of external
water resources?
33. Write adaptive features of desert plants to reduce water loss?
34. How is salanity measured in water?
35. What is inland water? What will be the measure of salanity of such water? Is this water called
as fresh water?
36. What will be the percentage of salt in hypersaline lagoons?
37. You are told to check the quality of water during your practical exam. What factors will you
keep in mind while drawing the conclusion for quality check?
38. Give reason why freshwater organisms cannot live in sea water for long?
39. In a dense forest, the shurbs and herbs rarely get sunlight. What do you think about their role in
photosynthesis? How do they survive?
40. Animals do not use light for preparing their own food. But still light plays an important role in
their life. How?
41. How do we maintain constant body temperature in summers and in winters?
42. What do you think about the source of energy for the organisms residing in deep seas?
43. Give reason why only red algae occur in deepest oceans?
44. Why the nature and properties of soil varies at different places?
45. Heat loss or heat gain is a function of..................................................
46. Write down the adaptive features of Opuntia.
47. What is the group of plants known as which have enabled them in such a manner that they
close their stomata during day time?
48. What determines the type of animals in any area?
49. How do our body adapt to higher altitudes where oxygen concentration is low?
50. If a marine fish is placed in a fresh water aquarium, will the fish be able to survive? Why or
why not?
51. Most living organisms cannot survive at temperature above 45 0C. How are some microbes able
to live in habitats with temperatures exceeding 1000C?
52. List the attributes that populations but not individuals possess.
53. If a population growing exponentially double in size in 3 years, what is the intrinsic rate of
increase (r) of the population?
54. Name important defence mechanisms in plants against herbivory.
55. Define population ecology. How this is different from ecology?
Chapter 13: Organism and Population
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Biology XII
56. “The shape of the pyramids reflects the growth status of the population”, explain.
57. There are 10 lions in zoo and 500 amoebas in a glass of water. What is this denoting in terms of
population attributes?
58. Is this true that those organisms with low population density have no significance in an area?
Explain giving example.
59. How is the tiger population calculated?
60. If you have a dense laboratory culture of bacteria in a petri-dish what is the best measure to
report its density?
61. Why it is said that the size of a population for any species is not a static parameter? Explain
giving example.
62. Give reasons for the population fluctuation.
63. If in a population of birds with 600 individuals, 6 chicks hatch from eggs every month. On an
average 50 birds die each year. 30 birds from other population came to live with them in a year
and 3 flew away every three months. Calculate the number of individuals after one year.
64. Under what conditions the immigration plays a significant role in population growth?
65. When does a population tend to grow exponentially?
66. How increase or decrease of the population size is expressed when there is unlimited food
resources?
67. What is the r in the following equation? dN/dt=rN. Why is this an important factor?
68. What is the type of graph obtained when we plot N in relation to time when resources are
unlimited?
69. Give integral form of exponential growth equation.
70. Is this possible that a tiger population increases enormously? Explain with example.
71. The sigmoid curve is obtained when a graph is plotted with N in relation to time. How will you
describe this?
72. Which model is more realistic and why, exponential or logistic?
73. What is Darwinian fitness? Explain giving example.
74. Give any two examples each of organisms which
(a) breed once during their lifetime,
(b) produce large number of small sized offsprings,
(c) produce small number of large-sized offsprings.
75. How life history traits of organisms have developed?
76. Is survival of a single species possible? Explain giving example.
77. What is interspecific interaction? What are the possible outcomes of interspecific interactions?
78. Give the term for the phenomenon where one individual is benefited and other is neither
harmed nor benefited. Give one example for above situation.
79. Give the term for the phenomenon where one individual is harmed and other is neither harmed
nor benefited. Give one example for above situation.
80. What is the benefit of predators in any ecosystem?
81. What will be the consequences if a species is introduced in some area where there is no natural
predator of that organism?
82. On which factor the biological control methods are based upon?
83. Write the economic importance of predator in an ecosystem.
84. How you can tell the importance of predator if we take an example of Pisaster?
85. What will happen if the predator is too efficient?
86. From where the monarch butterfly get the poison and when?
Chapter 13: Organism and Population
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Biology XII
87. What do you understand by the term phytophagous?
88. Give examples of the adaptive features by which the plants can avoid predators.
89. What will happen if there is interspecific competition?
90. What are the factors which give rise to competition? Explain giving example.
91. Explain the experiment conducted by Gause.
92. Give reason for the extinction of Abingdon tortoise in Galapagos Island.
93. What is competitive release?
94. Explain Connell’s elegant field experiment.
95. What is Gause’s competitive exclusion principle?
96. How can two species co-exist in same habitat without giving competition to each other?
97. Write the morphological features of endoparasites.
98. What do you understand by co-evolution? Explain giving example.
99. Why some of parasites have more than one host?
[Link] the primary and secondary host of liver fluke.
[Link] the term ‘brood parasitism’.
[Link] type of interaction will be found between an orchid and mango, egret and cattle, or sea
anemone and clown fish?
[Link] are mycorrhizae?
[Link] with example the interaction between fig and wasp.
[Link] is sexual deceit? How it benefits the Ophrys?
Chapter 13: Organism and Population
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