Midterm

TOTAL = 85pts

• 5 questions

• 50 minutes

• about 10 minutes per question

1. [17pts] Plant classification has gone through many iterations since botanists first started to try and figure out how plants are related to each other and how they should be grouped.  Please provide a brief synopsis of the history of plant classification that brings us to the present day.  Include in this answer how the now deprecated “monocot vs. dicot” approach is an example of how classification can go wrong (think phylogenies).  Include names like Darwin, Ray, Linnaeus, Miller, and Fairchild.  I will only expect you to use the information we have gone over in class to complete this answer.

2. [17pts] In the discussion paper “Moving, Sensing, Intelligent Plants” the author makes an assertion that plants both sense their environment and move according to what they have sensed.  Please give two examples we have worked through in class where plants are sensing and moving in response to their environment.  Please provide an in-depth description of how exactly this happens within the plant.  Additionally, the author of “Moving, Sensing, Intelligent Plants” listed other plant attributes that we did NOT cover extensively in class that point towards plants sensing and responding to their environment.  Please list at least 3 additional examples (no need for in-depth description for these).  Would you classify these responses as evidence of “intelligence”?  Why or why not?

3. [17pts] Please provide a summary of photosynthesis (both the light-dependent and light-independent reactions). Specifically include these terms:  photosystem I, Photosystem II, excited electron, chlorophyll, cytochrome complex, NADPH, RuBisCO, NADP+, RuBP, carbon dioxide, oxygen, water, protons, ATP, lumen, stroma, stomata, photon, glucose.  Do NOT write this in paragraph form - instead label the diagrams provided and add text onto the diagrams to elaborate on specific steps that we have gone over in class.  Additionally - indicate on the diagram how a plant can “shortcut” photosynthesis when ATP is in short supply but NADPH is in excess.

4. [17pts] Explain in detail how a tree is able to get water from the roots to the crown.  What condition(s) must be met for this to work?  

5. [17pts] Look at the 3 lifecycle diagrams for bryophytes, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.  Identify how “alternation of generations” is represented across all 3 of these lifecycles.  Specifically, label the following on each of the 3 diagrams:  sporophyte, male gametophyte, female gametophyte, sperm, egg, meiosis, mitosis.  Additionally, on the angiosperm life cycle - label all parts of the life cycle that are “new” or have been “added” compared to the bryophyte lifecycle.

KEY - document

KEY - diagrams