Answers to Workbook exercises
Chapter 20
S Exercise 20.1 Energy transfer in a f The nitrate was produced from ammonia, by S
nitrifying bacteria.
food chain
a The position in a food chain at which an
organisms feeds. Exercise 20.3 Goats on an island
b In sequence: producer, primary consumer, a i The curve should be the classic S-shape,
secondary consumer, tertiary consumer. beginning fairly flat, then rising steeply before
levelling off.
c i 20 × 100 = 0.1% ii Limiting factors begin to cut in at the point
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where the curve begins to flatten out.
ii Much of it is lost as heat to the environment,
through respiration. Some goes to the b i A change in a gene or chromosome.
decomposer food chain. ii The long-hair allele, a, is recessive, so a goat
needs two copies (one from each parent)
d i There is not enough energy available at
in order to have long hair. Only goat P
the higher trophic levels to support large
can pass on an allele for long hair, not the
populations.
females, so none of its offspring could have
ii By the time you reach a fifth or sixth link,
long hair.
there is not enough energy to support any
iii Some of the offspring from goat P would
organisms at all.
have inherited one copy of the a allele. If
these bred with each other (or with goat P),
Exercise 20.2 Fish tank then there would be a 1 in 4 chance of each
offspring having the genotype aa and having
a They had no light, so they could not
long hair.
photosynthesise.
c i The long-haired goats did not lose as much
b protein
heat from their well-insulated bodies, and
c The dead phytoplankton were decomposed by the so needed to generate less heat through
bacteria in the water. These secreted enzymes that respiration. They therefore needed less
digested the proteins and other compounds in glucose (or other nutrients) to use as fuel in
the cells of the dead phytoplankton. The digested respiration.
products were absorbed into the decomposers’ cells. ii The goats with long hair would have been
d The ammonia came from the breakdown of at a selective advantage – they would be
nitrogen-containing substances, such as proteins, more likely to survive and breed than the
in the cells of the dead phytoplankton. shorthaired goats. In each generation, there
would therefore be more chance of the alleles
e Nitrate first appeared in December – that is, about for long hair being passed on than the alleles
one month after the start of the experiment. The for short hair.
quantity of nitrate increased sharply in April.
© Cambridge University Press 2014 IGCSE® Biology Chapter 20: Answers to Workbook exercises 1
