IB Biology A3.1 Pub Quiz: Diversity of organisms

What it covers

IB Biology at SL, with HL cards when you switch the level: A3.1 Diversity of organisms.

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 IB Biology.

1. Identical twins carry the same genes. Why are they never identical in every trait?
2. True or false: if two birds look very different, they must be different species. Explain.
3. Panthera leo, Panthera tigris, Panthera pardus, Felis catus: which is the odd one out, and why?
4. Horses and donkeys can mate and have mules. Why are horses and donkeys still counted as separate species?
5. Why can't the biological species concept tell you whether two fossil skulls belong to the same species?
6. Ensatina salamanders form a ring of populations round California's Central Valley: neighbours interbreed, but the two ends do not. Why is it hard to count the species?

Riddle me this

Course terms as riddles. Teams write what it is.

1. I give every species two names: a capitalised genus, then a lowercase second word, as in Homo sapiens. What am I?
2. I'm a picture of a cell's chromosomes, cut out and lined up in pairs by length, banding and centromere position. What am I?
3. I'm all the hereditary information of an organism, every letter of its DNA. A marbled lungfish's is over 40 times bigger than yours. What am I?
4. I'm one letter of DNA that differs from person to person. Most of what makes your DNA yours alone is made of me. What am I?
5. I say that if you can breed together and have fertile young, you belong together. Fossils give me a headache. What am I?

Quickfire

Short recall from the same topics.

1. Differences among members of a species
2. Defining kinds by fertile interbreeding
3. Two-part Latin naming, e.g. Homo sapiens