Monday, April 20, 2009

GRE ftw!

Today I'm going to recall one of the sample GRE exam questions that I may or may not have missed. This question has to do with biotic potential. The question was: "What organism has the greatest biotic potential?" The possible answers (multiple choice questions) were asexual organisms, sexual organisms, rodents, or something silly that wasn't the right answer. The correct answer here is rodents (or at least that's what the answer key would acceptas correct).

Biotic potential is a term describing the maximum capacity an organism (or group of organisms for that matter) to where said population can reproduce while under optimum environmental conditions. Rodents then obviously do fit the bill here, as they do reproduce at a relatively high rate. However, single-celled asexual organisms can undergo mitotic divisions much faster than rodents can pass through its respective fetal developmental stages. So I'm not entirely sure why rodents were chosen over the asexual organisms answer. However, I can see how rodents generally do have "a high biotic potential."

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