AP Biology Unit 8 Pub Quiz: Ecology

What it covers

AP Biology : Unit 8: Ecology.

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. In a crowded gannet colony, each pair spends hours a day fighting its neighbors over nest space. What does that cost their breeding, and why?
2. In 1963 the island of Surtsey rose from the sea off Iceland as bare lava, with no soil. Within a few years mosses and lichens moved in. What process had begun?
3. A toxin is harmless at its level in seawater, but I build it up step by step through the food chain until it poisons the sharks at the top. What am I?
4. What would happen to a lake's fish a few weeks after fertilizer runoff caused a huge algal bloom, and why?
5. Brown tree snakes, brought to Guam by accident, had no predators there and wiped out most of the island's native forest birds. What kind of species is the snake on Guam?
6. True or false, and why? In a food web, an arrow from a mouse to a snake means the mouse eats the snake.

Riddle me this

Course terms as riddles. Teams write what it is.

1. I'm a chemical message: one ant lays me down and the whole colony follows the trail. What am I?
2. A woodlouse in dry air just scuttles faster and turns more, at random, until it stumbles into the damp. I'm that change in speed with no set direction. What am I?
3. A moth flies straight at a light; a sperm swims straight at an egg. I'm movement aimed toward or away from a stimulus. What am I?
4. I'm a long winter sleep: heart rate and body temperature drop way down to save energy until spring. What am I?
5. I warm myself from the inside with my own metabolism, so I need far more food than a snake my size. What am I?

Quickfire

Short recall from the same topics.

1. Movement toward or away from a stimulus
2. Undirected change in movement rate
3. Chemical message within a species