The first angiosperms may originally have been small, treelike plants in tropical regions, but eventually they began diversifying rapidly into other habitats where early gymnosperms flourished. South African botanist William Bond proposed the “slow seedling” hypothesis to help explain this evolutionary change, and botanists continue to refine it. The hypothesis proposes that angiosperms were able…

Concerns about global climate change and the greenhouse effect center on rising levels of greenhouse gases, including atmospheric carbon dioxide. Plants use CO2 for photosynthesis, and laboratory studies suggest that increased CO2 levels could cause a rise in photosynthetic activity. However, as one environmentalist noted, “What plants do in environmental chambers may not happen in nature, where…

Botanists estimate that half or more of angiosperm species may be polyploids that arose initially through hybridization. Polyploidy—having more than a diploid set of the parental chromosomes—can result from nondisjunction of homologous chromosomes during meiosis, or when cytokinesis fails to occur in a dividing cell. Hybridization is the successful mating of individuals from two different…

Tiny, thornlike trichomes on leaves are a common plant adaptation to ward off insects. Those trichomes develop very early on, as outgrowths of a seedling’s epidermal cells. Biologists have observed, however, that many mature plants develop more leaf trichomes after the fact, as a response to insect damage. Researchers at the University of Chicago decided…

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster can distinguish a large repertoire of odors in the environment. Their response may be to move toward food or away from danger. Moreover, particular odors play an important role in their mating behavior. The olfactory organs of a fruit fly are the antennae and an elongated bulge on the head…

(a) Temperate grassland and chaparral often burn in lightning-induced fires, which stimulate the germination of seeds and regrowth of existing vegetation. Do you think that companies or the government should sell fire insurance to people who build expensive homes in places where periodic fires are virtually inevitable? (b) Boreal forests generally harbor many fewer species…

Dante Development Corporation is considering bidding on a contract for a new office building complex. Figure 4.17 shows the decision tree prepared by one of Dante’s analysts. At node 1, the company must decide whether to bid on the contract. The cost of preparing the bid is $200,000. The upper branch from node 2 shows…

Mental measurements of young children are often made by giving them blocks and telling them to build a tower as tall as possible. One experiment of block building was repeated a month later, with the times (in seconds) and five pairs of children’ completion times are listed below. Test the claim that there is a…

1. When local calls are made in NYC, 60% go through on the first try, and the rest get a busy signal. (We assume there is no third possibility). Let X=# times a call is actually placed for the call to go through Of course on each try, the call goes through with probability .6.…

This project will assess your ability to work as a team to apply generalised linear modelling to create a reproducible piece of analysis of real-world customer loan data. The project is comprised of the following deliverables:1. A Summary on a Page (SOAP) distilling the key outcomes of your project down to a one page executive…