AP Biology: Donor Source Extreme-Event Matching Practice Questions
Practice evaluating donor populations for restoration when rare climate extremes may matter more than average conditions. These original AP Biology questions connect extreme-event exposure, compound heat-drought risk, climate variance, trait trade-off evidence, scenario sensitivity, and multi-year fitness without treating any donor source as certain to succeed.
Free original practice questions for study purposes. Open Exam Prep is an independent study resource and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the makers of AP Exams.
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Answer the questions below — you get instant feedback and a full explanation for each.
1. Which comparison best measures a potential donor population's extreme-event exposure?
Explanation. Extreme-event exposure describes how often stressful events occur and how intense or long they are. Annual averages can hide short events that strongly affect survival and reproduction.
2. Why can simultaneous heat and drought create a compound heat-drought risk greater than either stress alone?
Explanation. Heat can increase evaporative demand while dry soil limits water uptake. Their joint effect may therefore be stronger than evaluating heat and drought independently.
3. Two donor sites have the same mean summer temperature. Which additional observation most directly shows why climate variance matters?
Explanation. Climate variance measures spread around an average. Populations exposed to the same mean but different variability may experience different selection pressures and stress histories.
4. A donor population survives severe drought well but grows slowly and produces fewer seeds in wet years. What does this pattern illustrate?
Explanation. A trait trade-off occurs when a feature that improves performance in one context carries a cost in another. Donor selection should consider both extreme survival and reproduction across ordinary years.
5. Which analysis provides the clearest test of scenario sensitivity in donor ranking?
Explanation. Scenario sensitivity asks whether a decision changes across plausible assumptions. A donor that performs well across several credible scenarios is supported more robustly than one favored by only a single forecast.
6. Which outcome is the strongest measure of multi-year fitness for a donor-source field trial?
Explanation. Multi-year fitness evidence follows contributions to future generations across variable conditions. Early growth alone can miss later mortality, failed reproduction, or poor recruitment.
7. Why is matching only long-term average rainfall insufficient when selecting a donor for a drought-prone refugium?
Explanation. The same annual total can result from evenly spaced rain or from a few storms separated by long dry periods. Organisms may respond strongly to event timing and duration.
8. Which experiment best separates inherited donor differences from immediate environmental effects during an extreme-event test?
Explanation. Shared treatments, replication, and randomization reduce environmental confounding. Family-level replication also helps estimate consistent source differences without assuming every difference is genetic.
9. A heat wave and drought tend to occur in the same years across several refugia patches. Why does this correlation matter?
Explanation. When extreme events are correlated across patches, failures may occur at the same time rather than being buffered by unaffected sites. Network planning should account for this shared risk.
10. How can a seed-dispersal kernel inform donor movement after an extreme event?
Explanation. A dispersal kernel summarizes movement probabilities across distances. It can help identify connectivity limits, but demographic and genetic evidence is still needed before assisted movement is expanded.
11. Which preplanned rule is most defensible for expanding an extreme-event-matched donor trial?
Explanation. A threshold tied to replicated survival and reproduction across contrasting years protects against scaling from a chance result. It also makes the management decision transparent before outcomes are known.
12. One donor has the highest survival after a single heat wave but the lowest seed production during the next two years. Which conclusion is most appropriate?
Explanation. A short-term survival advantage may not translate into population growth. Comparing reproduction, recruitment, and additional events avoids overgeneralizing from one response and one event.
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FAQ
What is extreme-event matching in restoration?
It compares potential donor populations with the frequency, intensity, duration, and combinations of climate extremes expected at a recipient site. It identifies candidates for testing rather than guaranteeing success.
Why compare compound climate events?
Heat, drought, floods, or freezes can interact, so their combined biological effect may differ from the effect predicted by studying each stress separately.
How should managers validate an extreme-event-matched donor?
Use replicated controlled treatments and field plots, compare plausible scenarios, and measure survival, reproduction, and recruitment over multiple ordinary and extreme years before expanding the intervention.