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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Quammen say makes animals smaller on islands?
(a) Larger food supply.
(b) Smaller food supply.
(c) Larger predators.
(d) Smaller territories.

2. What belief of Darwin's has modern science disproved?
(a) That science would fill in all the missing links in the evolutionary chain.
(b) That traits a parent acquires during its life are passed down to its young.
(c) That evolve tends toward the perfection of each species.
(d) That species can only react to their environmental conditions.

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

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

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

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is Krakatau?

2. How many species would an island of 4,000 square miles have, according to Quammen?

3. What does Quammen say makes his field important?

4. What does Michael Soule study?

5. What rule governs the relationship between the size of an island and the number of species it can support?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is trophic cascade?

2. What findings of Michael Soule's does Quammen cite at the end of Chapter 4, "Rarity Unto Death"?

3. What practical assertion does Quammen say Frank Preston made based on his findings?

4. What factors have effectively broken the Persian rug of nature into pieces, according to Quammen?

5. Who is Philip Darlington, and what was his contribution to the discussion of island size and species count?

6. What was MacArthur and Wilson's contribution to island biogeography?

7. What does Quammen say about the overall pattern of the Persian rug?

8. What are the different terms Quammen describes for how people have accounted for the degradation of ecosystems?

9. Who is Frank Preston, and what was his contribution to the discussion of island size and species count?

10. What do we know about the dodo?

(see the answer keys)

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