AP Biology Unit 7 Pub Quiz: Natural Selection

What it covers

AP Biology : Unit 7: Natural Selection.

The running order

nine rounds and a handout of riddles. Review rounds are drawn from this topic each time you open the quiz, so two classes never get the same paper, and every review round can be redrawn in a click.

1. Riddle me this review
   Course terms as riddles: "I have a head that loves water and two tails that hate it…" Teams write what it is.
2. Close-up fun
   A tiny zoomed-in patch. What's the full picture?
3. Fact or fiction fun
   Myths and true-but-weird facts. Teams write Fact or Fiction.
4. Think it through review
   Scenarios, odd ones out, true or false and why, puzzles: questions to reason through. Give teams a little longer.
5. Films in science-speak fun
   A film plot, described like a research abstract. Name the film.
6. Who am I? Scientists fun
   Three clues, hardest first. 3 points after clue 1, 2 after clue 2, 1 after clue 3.
7. Missing vowels: course terms review
   Your key terms with the vowels taken out.
8. Funny animal noises fun
   YouTube clips of animals making ridiculous noises. Screen off, listen, guess, then watch the reveal.
9. Closest wins fun
   Estimation questions. Nearest team wins the point. Doubles as the tiebreaker.

A taste of the questions

Think it through

Scenarios, odd ones out and true or false and why, from AP Biology.

1. True or false, and why? New mutations, and chance swings in allele frequency in small populations, steadily make a population better suited to its environment.
2. A peacock's huge tail makes him slow and easy for a tiger to catch. Why hasn't evolution got rid of it?
3. A handful of seeds blows to a distant island and starts a colony carrying only their alleles, not the mainland's full set. What am I?
4. What would happen to gene flow between two wolf packs if a new fenced highway stopped them ever meeting to mate?
5. Eastern and western meadowlarks look almost identical and their ranges overlap, but they don't interbreed. Their songs differ. What keeps them apart?
6. Squeeze a population through me and most of its alleles never make it out, leaving it short of options when the climate shifts. What am I?

Riddle me this

Course terms as riddles. Teams write what it is.

1. Humans play nature's part with me, breeding the biggest, tamest or tastiest, so wolves became poodles and wild mustard became broccoli. What am I?
2. I'm a leftover with little or no use now, like a whale's tiny hip bones or your tailbone. What am I?
3. I'm the likeness between a bird's wing and a butterfly's: same job, different build, no shared ancestor behind it. What am I?
4. One ancestor reaches a chain of empty islands and I turn it into a dozen species, each with a beak for a different food. What am I?
5. I'm the imaginary population where allele frequencies never budge: huge, randomly mating, nobody moving in or out, nothing new arising, no one favored. What am I?

Quickfire

Short recall from the same topics.

1. Better-suited variants leave more young
2. Descent with modification
3. Reproductive success in an environment