View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is an indri?

2. What would Carl Jones feed to the wild Mauritius kestrels?

3. How does Quammen's tone change in the final chapter?

4. When did Wilson and MacArthur publish 'An Equilibrium Theory of Insular Zoogeography'?

5. What did Wilson and MacArthur argue influenced the number of species on an island?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Quammen describe the indri?

2. What is the definition of 'viable' in Quammen's account?

3. How did Krakatau serve as evidence for MacArthur and Wilson's thesis?

4. What other ecosystems function as islands and show the same properties of species population and diversity as islands, according to Quammen?

5. What did people argue over in the wake of Simberloff and Abele's 1976 article?

6. What theory did Simberloff and Abele challenge in a 1976 article?

7. What conclusion dis scientists reach in the Texas case?

8. Describe Quammen's attempt to see an indri.

9. What is Quammen doing at the end of the book?

10. Who was Thomas Lovejoy, and what was his reaction to the debate Simberloff and Abele began?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is ecotourism a solution to the problem of species loss? Is tourism a competitor to enforce some constraints on commerce and development? Would the problem of species loss be remedied or worsened if people followed Quammen's example and traveled from one island to another witnessing the environmental degradation and stress on species?

Essay Topic 2

How does Quammen walk the line between stirring up the reader's outrage about extinctions, and soothing the reader's sadness about extinctions? How does he keep the reader from putting down the book out of despair?

Essay Topic 3

Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the scientific methods used to measure and assess island biogeography. What do we gain by way of insight and understanding? What patterns or trends does the data fail to account for?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 773 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample