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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through So Huge A Bignes.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What advice did Darwin receive from his friends, with regard to Wallace's work?
(a) Credit Wallace and share the glory with him.
(b) Publish an outline quickly.
(c) To work with Wallace and publish a joint theory.
(d) To buy Wallace's notes from him, and pledge him to silence.

2. What is the first example Quammen cites of a species that has gone extinct?
(a) The passenger pigeon in North America.
(b) The tiger in Bali.
(c) The dodo.
(d) The Manatee in Florida.

3. What does Quammen say makes his field important?
(a) Because it accounts for events other fields cannot account for.
(b) Because it is holistic and global in scope.
(c) Because it has predicted recent phenomena.
(d) Because island ecosystems are a good metaphor for ecosystems as a whole.

4. What evidence did Wallace site to suggest problems with the special creation theory?
(a) That species had adapted to every different environment on earth.
(b) That some ecological niches went unfilled.
(c) That human beings could be found in every climate.
(d) That when species were displaced, they sometimes thrived in the new territory.

5. What were the first plants to arrive after the eruption of Krakatau?
(a) Mosses and ferns.
(b) Lichens.
(c) Grasses.
(d) Mushrooms.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the literary term that describes Quammen's addressing the reader directly?

2. Where did Quammen go to study temrecs?

3. What does Quammen say Wallace developed in South America?

4. What assumption does Quammen make at the end of his introductory chapter?

5. How does Quammen say lizards probably arrived at Krakatau?

(see the answer key)

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