Exam 16: The Evolution of Plants and Fungi

Scenario People utilize plants to meet many everyday needs, including food, fiber, and building materials. However, not many of the over 300,000 known species of plants are used by people. One species with a lot of future promise is the jatropha tree. This species is native to Central America and is now found throughout the tropics. Many people believe the jatropha could help alleviate poverty in many areas of the world, as the seeds produce an oil that can be used for cooking, lighting, or generating electricity. This oil can also be mixed with diesel fuel or petrol to produce a biofuel. Mature trees produce between 5 and 15 kg of seeds per year and can live more than 30 years. -Suppose a weather catastrophe occurred such that the bird pollinators of the jatropha tree were significantly diminished. Which form of dispersal might jatropha trees need for a chance to continue producing flowers and seeds?

Seeds develop from ________.

Which lineage of green algae is believed to most resemble early plant ancestors?

What adaptation accounts for the unparalleled success of the angiosperms?

Scenario People utilize plants to meet many everyday needs, including food, fiber, and building materials. However, not many of the over 300,000 known species of plants are used by people. One species with a lot of future promise is the jatropha tree. This species is native to Central America and is now found throughout the tropics. Many people believe the jatropha could help alleviate poverty in many areas of the world, as the seeds produce an oil that can be used for cooking, lighting, or generating electricity. This oil can also be mixed with diesel fuel or petrol to produce a biofuel. Mature trees produce between 5 and 15 kg of seeds per year and can live more than 30 years. -What is a possible disadvantage of using jatropha seeds to produce oil?

Suppose that, while on a forest hike, you notice a blue fungus and a pink plant growing along the hiking trail. As you continue walking, you observe that if a blue fungus and a pink plant are growing side by side, they are both much larger than if the fungus and the plant are farther apart. What can you hypothesize about the relationship between the fungus and the plant?

________, a chemical that hardens cell walls and supports terrestrial plants, is found in all plants EXCEPT ________.

Gametophytes are ________; sporophytes are ________.

Gymnosperms and angiosperms share multiple similarities. All of these are similarities except one. Choose the exception.

In ________ the gametophyte is more obvious than the sporophyte.

Nearly all food plants are ________.

Mutualistic associations of plant roots and fungi are called ________.

In a laboratory experiment, researchers treated pine seedlings from Puerto Rico with mycorrhizae collected from pine forests in the southeastern United States. Results were favorable for increased seedling growth in the trees treated with mycorrhizae. Suppose when the researchers then tried this same experiment in the field, pine tree seedlings treated with mycorrhizae showed minimal growth differences from the control group. All but one of the listed factors could have contributed to these results. Choose the exception.

The figure shows results of a study where pine trees were treated with fungal mycorrhize to determine if the mycorrhize would affect the growth of the trees. Over the four-year study, only 36% of the control trees survived, while 85% of the pines treated with mycorrhizae survived. If the study was extended for another two years to the year 1961, what would you predict would occur with the control data and mean height of the pine trees?

Which group of plants lacks vascular tissue?

A pollen grain is a ________.