Biology Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Geographical isolation leads to speciation through reproductive isolation.

Once a barrier divides a population, the two halves accumulate different mutations and experience different selection. Given long enough they diverge so far that they can no longer interbreed even if brought together - allopatric speciation.

Answer: A

The producers in an ecosystem are the green plants.

They alone convert light energy into chemical energy, so all the energy in the food chain enters through them. Animals are consumers and fungi and bacteria decomposers.

Answer: A

A bud is an embryonic shoot - a compressed stem tip with immature leaves or flower parts folded round it, protected by scales.

A terminal bud extends the shoot; axillary buds in the leaf axils give branches.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Liver

The liver is the body’s largest gland, weighing about 1.5 kg in an adult. It secretes bile as an exocrine gland while also performing hundreds of metabolic and detoxifying functions.

Answer: C

Anthology, in botany, is the study of flowers and flowering plants, from the Greek anthos.

The literary sense - a collection of poems - comes from the same root, a gathering of flowers.

Answer: A

Cell division takes place by mitosis, and by meiosis in the formation of gametes.

Mitosis produces two daughter cells genetically identical to the parent, and is how an organism grows and repairs itself. Meiosis halves the chromosome number and produces four genetically varied cells.

Answer: C

Aristotle is called the father of zoology.

His Historia Animalium, De Partibus Animalium and De Generatione Animalium describe and classify animals from direct observation, and his scala naturae was the first systematic arrangement of the animal kingdom.

Answer: D

Biology comes from Greek: bios, life, and logos, study.

The word was coined in its modern sense around 1800, independently by Lamarck in France and Treviranus in Germany.

Answer: A

Rickets is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D.

Without it the gut cannot absorb calcium, so the growing bones are not properly mineralised and bend under the child's weight, giving the characteristic bowed legs. The adult form is osteomalacia.

Answer: B

Carbohydrates are the smallest component of the cell membrane, at about 2 to 10 per cent.

Proteins make up roughly half by mass and lipids most of the rest. The carbohydrates occur only on the outer face, attached to proteins and lipids, where they act in cell recognition.