Biology  by Bradford
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Free · ready-made · present or print

IB Biology C4.1 Pub Quiz: Populations and communities

C4.1 as a pub quiz for your class: review rounds on this subtopic, mixed with pure-fun rounds so it feels like a night out and not another test. Opens at SL; switch to HL in the builder to add the higher level cards.

Print teacher pagesPrint student pagesOpen in the builder to change it

Teacher pages are the quizmaster script and tally sheet. Student pages are the team answer sheet, handout and picture sheet. Both open ready to print, on A4 or US Letter.

What it covers

IB Biology at SL, with HL cards when you switch the level: C4.1 Populations and communities.

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. Why does yeast added to fresh nutrient broth grow exponentially at first?
  2. Duckweed covering a pond doubles every few days, then stops spreading. Why does it level off?
  3. You plot a population's size on a log scale against time and get a straight line. What does that tell you?
  4. We take turns standing on lookout while the rest of our gang digs for food. Is that competition or cooperation, and who gains?
  5. Grey squirrels from North America have replaced red squirrels across much of Britain. Greys digest acorns better. What kind of interaction is driving the decline?
  6. When wolves vanished from Yellowstone, elk numbers soared and young aspen and willow trees disappeared. Top-down or bottom-up control?
Answers
  1. Resources are plentiful and competition is low, so births far exceed deaths
  2. It has reached carrying capacity: light, nutrients or space run short
  3. The population is growing exponentially
  4. Cooperation: the sentry warns of predators, so the whole group feeds more safely
  5. Interspecific competition (the invasive species gets the shared food more effectively)
  6. Top-down (predators had been controlling the herbivores)

Riddle me this

Course terms as riddles. Teams write what it is.

  1. I'm the most a habitat can support for the long run. Push past me and deaths outnumber births. What am I?
  2. I'm a deal where both sides win: nitrogen for sugar in a bean's roots, sugar for shelter in a coral. What am I?
  3. I'm a square frame placed at random so you can count the daisies or limpets inside me. What am I?
  4. I turn a mark-and-release survey into a head count: first catch times second catch, divided by the marked ones caught again. What am I?
  5. I'm a chemical war waged by plants, poisoning the soil so that competitors can't grow nearby. What am I?
Answers
  1. Carrying capacity
  2. Mutualism
  3. Quadrat
  4. Lincoln index
  5. Allelopathy

Quickfire

Short recall from the same topics.

  1. Group of one species living in one area
  2. All the populations sharing an area
  3. Frame used to estimate sessile populations
Answers
  1. Population
  2. Community
  3. Quadrat

How it runs

  1. Open it in the builder. The running order loads ready to go. Swap, add or drop rounds, or draw a round's questions again.
  2. Present it or print it. Present puts each round on the projector in 16:9 with quizmaster notes. Print gives the script, team answer sheets, a picture sheet and a tally sheet on A4 or US Letter, with no projector needed.
  3. Score it. Teams swap sheets, mark, and each plays one joker to double a round. The scores page reveals the leaderboard from last place up.

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