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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the relationship Quammen develops between the imaginary rug and ecosystems?
(a) Analogy.
(b) Synecdoche.
(c) Symbolism.
(d) Extended metaphor.

2. What does Michael Soule study?
(a) Birds in Guam.
(b) Lizards in the Gulf of California.
(c) Tasmanian tigers.
(d) Dodos.

3. How would you describe Quammen's style?
(a) Patient and thorough.
(b) Disjointed.
(c) Linear.
(d) Pedantic.

4. Where did Wallace travel after the Amazon?
(a) Palestine.
(b) Galapagos islands.
(c) Australia.
(d) The Malay Archipelago.

5. What did the dodo eat?
(a) Small mammals and snakes.
(b) Other birds.
(c) Insects.
(d) Fruit.

6. How did sailors describe the dodo?
(a) Stupid.
(b) Canny.
(c) Cagey.
(d) Swift.

7. How does Quammen find fault with other scientists studying extinctions?
(a) By saying that their nostalgia clouds their findings.
(b) By saying that their fundamental premises were ungrounded.
(c) By saying that their vocabulary is insufficient to the problems.
(d) By saying that they have only been talking to each other.

8. What traits did sailors notice in animals on remote islands?
(a) They adapted more quickly to environmental changes than animals on larger land masses.
(b) They were unafraid of humans, and thus easy prey.
(c) They were smaller and harder to observe than their counterparts on land.
(d) They were more varied than species on land.

9. What does Quammen says Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace had in common?
(a) They both collected insects and primates.
(b) They both studied birds.
(c) They both found hostile responses to their work.
(d) They both studied island ecosystems.

10. What population does Quammen compare with the thylacine population?
(a) The dodo.
(b) The passenger pigeon.
(c) The indigenous people of Tasmania.
(d) The Komodo dragon.

11. How would you describe Quammen's narrative of the dodo's decline and extinction?
(a) Detailed hypothesis.
(b) Speculation.
(c) Detailed narrative.
(d) Ungrounded fiction.

12. What ecosystem does Wallace distinguish from ecosystems that developed in isolation?
(a) Ecosystems that had been part of a larger land mass, but broke away.
(b) Ecosystems that were simplified over time.
(c) Ecosystems where great complexity developed out of local conditions.
(d) Ecosystems where people had introduced new species.

13. What did Frank Preston study?
(a) Adaptive radiation.
(b) Predator-prey relations.
(c) Species divergence.
(d) Species distribution.

14. What does a species have if it has high dispersal ability?
(a) The ability to move from place to place.
(b) The ability to change their environment to suit their own traits.
(c) The ability to withstand great environmental changes.
(d) The ability to adapt to new environmental conditions.

15. What is a trophic cascade?
(a) The interrelation between species.
(b) The result of change in one species' hunting habits.
(c) The cycle of expansion and contraction in animal populations.
(d) The consequences of habitat depletion.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who did Robert Bates work with?

2. How long after the eruption did it take for 271 species to be counted at Krakatau?

3. Which scientist compared animals on islands with their counterparts on larger landmasses?

4. What was Tasmania's environmental history, according to Quammen?

5. Where did the dodo nest?

(see the answer keys)

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