What Is the AP Biology Exam?

What is the AP Biology Exam?

The AP Biology Exam consists of two parts

• Multiple choice and Grid Ins section
• Counts for 50% of the exam grade
• Composed of 63 multiple choice questions and 6 Grid In questions which may include mathematical manipulation and, or calculations.
• Free response section
• Counts for the remaining 50% of the exam grade
• Composed of two subsections
• The first subsection consists of a few multi-part free response questions, one of which connects to the lab experience
• The second subsection consists of several single-part free response questions
• There are a total of two long free-response questions and six shorter free-response questions

Tips for Completing the Multiple Choice Section:

1. Read each answer choice carefully. First, try to eliminate answer choices that are clearly wrong.
2. Notice that more than one answer choice may be relevant to the topic, but always select the most appropriate.
3. Since there is no penalty for incorrect answers, make educated guesses when the answer is not clear.
4. Bring several number 2 pencils with very clean erasers. Extraneous markings on the scantron form can interfere with the accuracy of the scanning equipment.
5. Because of the emphasis on quantitative skills, simple (not scientific and not graphing) calculators may be used during the exam.

Tips for Completing the Free Response Section:

1. Read each question thoroughly.
2. Pay close attention to the verbs in the questions. Identify if you are supposed to list, describe, or explain something and then focus writing the essay around that action.
3. Identify the various components of the question.
4. Divide questions that have multiple parts into separate sections even if not specifically asked for in the question because it makes the reading of the essay easier and it is easier to see how you addressed each section in your response.
5. Pay attention to words like “and” and “or”. Only answer as many sections or give as many examples as directed to provide.
6. Do not provide extra examples when a set number is requested.
7. If no limit on example numbers is provided, feel free to elaborate with additional examples
8. If a question asks you to explain three of four terms, only explain three.
9. Any information you give on a fourth term will not be awarded points and will only be consuming valuable time.
10. Write in blue or black pen.
11. Pencil is hard to read. Colored ink is distracting and not as clear to the reader. Make sure your ink does not bleed through the back of the page.

1. Use the best and clearest handwriting that you can.
2. Readers don’t want to have to reread a section of a response several times to prevent missing some important comments.
3. Points are given for valid information with explanations.
4. Elaborate on your responses with explanations and examples. Often single related words or unexplained references will not be given any points.
5. Bulleted answers and lists will not be awarded points.
6. However, refrain from writing verbose essays that reword the same comment several times. All of the detailed, well-explained points will be awarded for information in the body of a traditional essay.
7. Keep the responses focused
8. If a question or part of a question asks you to focus on a specific component of a topic, stay focused on that component. You will not receive points for additional information on the concept that are not requested in the question.
9. Understanding science process skills is important.
10. For graphs, provide titles and clearly defined and labeled axes.
11. For experimental designs, describe plausible examples with clearly noted controls and experimental groups, standard conditions, replication, and data collection and analysis

BIG IDEAS!

Big Idea #1: The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life

KEY TERMS for this section:

1. Adaptation
2. Adaptive radiation
3. Allele
4. Allopatric speciation
5. Analogous structures
6. Antibiotic resistance
7. Artificial selection
8. Bottleneck effect
9. Cladograms
10. Clade
11. Common ancestor
12. Convergent evolution
13. Directional selection
14. Disruptive selection
15. Divergent evolution
16. Emigration
17. Evolution
18. Fertility
19. Founder effect
20. Gene flow
21. Gene pool
22. Genetic drift
23. Homologous structure
24. Hybrid
25. Immigration
26. Isolation types
27. Limited resources
28. Mutation
29. Natural selection
30. Outgroup
31. Phenotype
32. Phylogenetic tree
33. Population
34. Protobiont
35. Random mating
36. Reproductive isolation
37. Serial endosymbiosis
38. Sexual selection
39. Speciation
40. Species
41. Stabilizing selection
42. Sterility
43. Sympatric speciation
44. Variation
45. Vestigial organs
46. Viability

Enduring Understanding 1.A: Change in the genetic makeup of a population over time is evolution

1. What are the processes by which variation occurs in a given population?
2. How do the effects of genetic drift vary based upon population size?
3. What are the different types of selection and how does each drive evolution?
4. How do you determine the frequency of a dominant allele if the frequency of a recessive allele is given?
5. How do you determine the frequency of a recessive allele if the percentage of the population with the recessive phenotype is given?
6. How do you calculate the percentage of the population with a recessive allele if the percentage of the population expressing the dominant allele is given?
7. How do you differentiate between the frequency of an allele and the frequency of a genotype?
8. How do you interpret a graph showing how evolution favors different phenotypes?
9. What are the changes in a gene pool as a result of emigration and immigration?
10. What are the pressures that can increase or decrease the fitness of a particular population?

Enduring Understanding 1.B: Organisms are linked by lines of descent from common ancestry

1. How do you determine relative relatedness between organisms as represented by a cladogram?
2. How do you draw a cladogram, if you are given names of organisms/groups and specific characteristics?
3. How do youuse data to determine what organisms shared a more common ancestor?
4. What are the specific cellular similarities between related eukaryotes?

Enduring Understanding 1.C: Life continues to evolve within a changing environment

1. What is the difference between allopatric and sympatric speciation?
2. How can polyploidy lead to a new species in plants?
3. What can cause extinction of a species?
4. What are the prezygotic and postzygotic mechanisms of reproductive isolation? Make sure

you know how to correctly use the terms hybrid, viability, sterility, and fertility when explaining postzygotic mechanisms of isolation.

Enduring Understanding 1.D: The origin of living systems is explained by natural processes

1. What is the theory of serial endosymbiosis?
2. What are the potential heterotrophic and autotrophic eukaryotic ancestors?
3. What are the characteristics of the first living cell?
4. How do you properly use taxonomy when describing relatedness of organisms within phylogenetic trees and cladograms?
5. What are the similarities and the differences among the three domains?

Big idea #2: Biological systems utilize free energy and molecular building blocks to grow, to reproduce and to maintain dynamic homeostasis

KEY TERMS for this section:

1. Abiotic
2. Active transport
3. Adaptive radiation
4. Anabolic reactions
5. Apomixis
6. Asexual reproduction
7. ATP
8. ATP synthase
9. Binary fission
10. Biotic
11. Budding
12. Calvin cycle
13. Catabolic reactions
14. Chemiosmosis
15. Chloroplast
16. Community
17. Competitive inhibitor
18. Concentration gradient
19. Consumers
20. Cooperativity
21. Courtship behavior
22. Cryptic coloration
23. Cuticle
24. Cyclic photophosphorylation
25. Cytoskeleton
26. Diffusion
27. Divergent evolution
28. Ecosystem
29. Endergonic reactions
30. Energy coupling
31. Enthalpy
32. Entropy
33. Exergonic reactions
34. Facilitated diffusion
35. Feedback inhibition
36. Fermentation
37. G proteins
38. Glycolysis
39. Golgi apparatus
40. Homeostasis
41. Hypertonic
42. Hypotonic
43. Isotonic
44. Krebs cycle
45. Lysosome
46. Metabolism
47. Meiosis
48. Mitochondrion
49. Mitosis
50. Negative feedback
51. Net primary productivity
52. Noncyclic photophosphorylation
53. Nucleus
54. Osmoconformer
55. Osmoregulator
56. Osmosis
57. Passive transport
58. Periodic transport
59. Periodic disturbances
60. Pheromones
61. Photosynthesis
62. Phylogeny
63. Population
64. Positive feedback
65. Primary succession
66. Producers
67. Regeneration
68. Ribosome
69. Rough endoplasmic reticulum
70. Rubisco
71. Secondary succession
72. Sexual reproduction
73. Sexual selection
74. Smooth endoplasmic reticulum
75. Speciation
76. Transcription factors
77. Trophic levels
78. Vegetative reproduction

Enduring Understanding 2.A: Growth, reproduction and maintenance of the organization of living systems require free energy and matter

1. How does energy move through and is transformed in biological systems?
2. What is the difference between catabolic reactions and anabolic reactions?
3. What are the processes of anaerobic respiration, aerobic respiration, and photosynthesis?
4. What are the electron acceptors in the different energy capturing processes?
5. Compare and contrastanaerobic and aerobic respiration
6. What is chemiosmosis?
7. What are the specific cellularstructures that allow organisms to maximize the exchange of materials with the environment (maximize surface area to volume ratio)?
8. What are the different metabolic and reproductive strategies plants and animals use to maximize free energy (endothermic vs. exothermic, perennial vs. biennial vs. annual)?
9. What are the different mechanisms used by organisms to capture and store free energy?
10. What are the properties of water that impact living systems?

Enduring Understanding 2.B: Growth, reproduction and dynamic homeostasis require that cells create and maintain internal environments that are different from their external environments

1. What is the structure of the plasma membrane?
2. Why is the plasma membrane selectively permeable?
3. How does cellular energy or energy from concentration gradients drive molecular movement across the membranes?
4. What are the characteristics of the following transport processes: diffusion, passive transport, facilitated diffusion, osmosis, active transport, and endocytosis?
5. What are the mechanisms and purposes of phagocytosis, pinocytosis, and receptor-mediated endocytosis?
6. What is the eukaryotic endomembrane system (explain structure and function)?
7. What are the structure and function of the following organelles: nucleus, lysosome, vacuole, vesicle, mitochondrion, chloroplast, ribosome, flagella, centriole, and cilia?
8. What are the cellular differences between prokaryotes and eukaryotes?

Enduring Understanding 2.C: Organisms use feedback mechanisms to regulate growth and reproduction, and to maintain dynamic homeostasis

1. What is homeostasis and how is it maintained?
2. What are positive and negative feedback systems? Give at least one example of each.
3. What isphotoperiodism?
4. What is the difference between taxis and kinesis and can you design an experiment to test a hypothesis related to types of movement?
5. What are circadian rhythms?
6. How do biological clocks function in mammals?

Enduring Understanding 2.D: Growth and dynamic homeostasis of a biological system are influenced by changes in the system’s environment

1. What are abiotic and biotic factors and how do they affect a community structure?
2. How does energy move through trophic levels?
3. How much energy is available to producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers?
4. What are food chains and food webs?
5. What are primary and secondary successions?
6. What are the interspecific relationships such as interspecific competition, herbivory, predation, commensalism, and mutualism?
7. How do organisms exchange nutrients and waste with their environment? Give specific examples
8. How is the mammalian immune system adapted to maintain homeostasis?

Enduring Understanding 2.E: Many biological processes involved in growth, reproduction and dynamic homeostasis include temporal regulation and coordination

1. What are the regulatory mechanisms that are crucial in cell differentiation?
2. How do homeotic genes control the pattern of body formation?
3. What is embryonic induction?
4. What plant hormones affect (and how) cell elongation, seed germination, fruit maturation, and apoptosis?
5. How do hibernation and estivation conserve energy?

Big idea #3: Living systems store, retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life processes

KEY TERMS for this section

1. Allele
2. Alternative splicing
3. Aneuploidy
4. Cell plate
5. Centromere
6. Cleavage furrow
7. Codominance
8. Conjugation
9. Crossing over
10. Cytokinesis
11. DNA
12. DNA ligase
13. DNA methylation
14. DNA polymerase
15. DNA replication
16. Epistasis
17. Euchromatin
18. Genotype
19. Helicase
20. Hemizygous
21. Heterochromatin
22. Heterozygous
23. Homologous chromosomes
24. Homozygous
25. Incomplete dominance
26. Independent assortment
27. Inducible operon
28. Kinetochore
29. Lagging strand
30. Leading strand
31. Linked traits
32. Lysogenic cycle
33. Lytic cycle
34. Meiosis
35. Mendelian genetics
36. Mitosis
37. Nondisjunction
38. Nucleotide
39. Operons
40. Phenotype
41. Pilus
42. Polygenic inheritance
43. Polyploidy
44. Purine
45. Pyrimidine
46. Repressible operon
47. RNA
48. Sex-linked traits
49. Splicing
50. Synapsis
51. Telomere
52. Transduction
53. Transformation

Enduring Understanding 3.A: Heritable information provides for continuity of life

1. What were the experiments that contributed to the understanding of the structure and function of DNA?
2. What is the structure of DNA?
3. How does DNA replicate and what are the enzymes involved in replication?
4. What are the similarities and the differences of the leading and the lagging strands of DNA during DNA replication?
5. What is the cell cycle and what are its stages?
6. Compare and contrast the process of cytokinesis in plant and animal cells
7. What are the cellular events in each stage of mitosis?
8. What are the cellular events in each stage of meiosis?
9. What are the similarities and the differences of mitosis and meiosis?
10. How does synapsis and crossing over occur in meiosis?
11. How does crossing over and independent assortment contribute to variation?
12. How are traits inherited?
13. Explain the following: Mendelian genetics, incomplete dominance, codominance, multiple alleles, polygenic inheritance, epistasis, sex-linked traits, and linked traits

Enduring Understanding 3.B: Expression of genetic information involves cellular and molecular mechanisms

1. What is the structure of a bacterial operon?
2. What is the difference between an inducible and a repressible operon?
3. How does chromatin compaction affect gene activity in eukaryotes?
4. How does DNA methylation and histone acetylation affect gene activity in eukaryotes?
5. How is the RNA transcript altered to mRNA in eukaryotes?
6. How does alternative splicing occur in eukaryotes?
7. How can alternative splicing and end cap removal be used to regulate gene activity in eukaryotes?
8. How can transcription factors and control regions affect gene activity in eukaryotes?
9. Compare and contrast local and long distance regulatory mechanisms
10. What are autocrine, paracrine, and synaptic signaling?
11. Compare and contrast protein hormones and steroid hormones

Enduring Understanding 3.C: The processing of genetic information is imperfect and is a source of genetic variation

1. How can mutation occur?
2. What is the difference between point mutations and chromosomal mutations?
3. What are substitutions, insertion, and deletions (point mutations)?
4. How does nondisjunction occur?
5. What is the difference between aneuploidy and polyploidy?
6. What are deletions, inversions, and translocations (chromosomal mutations)?
7. How does meiosis provide genetic variation?
8. How does random fertilization provide genetic variation?
9. How does transformation provide genetic variation?
10. How does conjugation provide genetic variation?
11. How does transduction provide genetic variation?
12. What is the structure of the viral genome?
13. How are the lysogenic and the lytic cycles of a virus different?

Enduring Understanding 3.D: Cells communicate by generating, transmitting and receiving chemical signals

1. What is the difference between a secretory cell and a target cell?
2. What are the three ways that cells can communicate?
3. Provide an example for each of the mechanisms of cell communication
4. How do plants and animals communicate differently?
5. What is a second messenger pathway (signal cascade)?

Enduring Understanding 3.E: Transmission of information results in changes within and between biological systems

1. What is a homeotic gene and how does it function?
2. What is the mechanism of seed germination?
3. How do genetic mutations affect development?
4. What is apoptosis and what is its purpose in normal and abnormal development?
5. How are short day and long day plants different?
6. What is phototropism and how does it work?
7. What is the role of melatonin in sleep wake cycles?
8. What is the function of pheromones?
9. What is a signal transduction pathway? Give an example

Big idea#4: Biological systems interact, and these systems and their interactions possess complex properties.

KEY TERMS for this section

1. Active site
2. Alimentary canal
3. Allosteric regulation
4. Alveoli
5. Amino acid
6. Atom
7. Atomic mass
8. Atomic number
9. Atrium
10. Carbohydrates
11. Cell wall
12. Centriole
13. Cholesterol
14. Chloroplast
15. Coenzymes
16. Cofactors
17. Competitive inhibition
18. Covalent bond
19. DNA
20. Disaccharides
21. Electrons
22. Feedback inhibition
23. Fatty acid
24. Flame cell
25. Glycolipids
26. Golgi apparatus
27. Heterozygous
28. Homozygous
29. Hormone
30. Hydrogen bond
31. Hydrophilic
32. Hydrophobic
33. Invasive species
34. Ionic bond
35. Isotope
36. Keystone species
37. Kidney
38. Lysosome
39. Malpighian tubule
40. Mitochondrion
41. Monosaccharides
42. Nephridia
43. Neuron
44. Neurotransmitter
45. Neutrons
46. Niche
47. Nonpolar covalent bond
48. Nucleic acid
49. Nucleolus
50. Nucleotide
51. Nucleus
52. Organ
53. Organelle
54. Peptide bond
55. Phagocytosis
56. Phospholipid
57. Plasma membrane
58. Polar covalent bond
59. Polysaccharides
60. Positive feedback
61. Protons
62. Purine
63. Pyrimidine
64. RNA
65. Radioactive isotopes
66. Ribosome
67. Rough endoplasmic reticulum
68. Smooth endoplasmic reticulum
69. Steroid
70. Substrate
71. Triglyceride
72. Valence electrons
73. Van der Waal interaction
74. Ventricle

Enduring Understanding 4.A: Interactions within biological systems lead to complex properties

1. What is the structure of an atom?
2. Compare and contrast covalent and ionic bonds
3. What are hydrogen bonds and why are they important?
4. What are Van der Waal interactions?
5. What are the structure and function of carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids?
6. What are the structure and function of all cell organelles?
7. How are prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells different and alike?
8. How are the mechanisms for gene regulation in prokaryotic cells different and alike?
9. What are positive and negative feedbacks? (Give an example of each)
10. How does the nervous system function to maintain homeostasis?
11. How does the endocrine system function to maintain homeostasis?
12. How do populations interact within a community?
13. What are the differences between a food chain and a food web?
14. How is energy passed through the trophic levels?

Enduring Understanding 4.B: Competition and cooperation are important aspects of biological systems