Environment & Ecology Mixed Quiz: Set 33

The correct answer is A, paint brushes made from mongoose hair. The mongoose is a protected animal under the Wild Life (Protection) Act, yet its hair was being used to make artists brushes, and Operation Clean Art was the Bureau first country-wide operation directed at a single wildlife article, ending with large seizures of brushes and raw hair. Option B is wrong because the smuggling of freshwater turtles and tortoises was the target of Operation Save Kurma, named from the Sanskrit word for turtle. Option C is wrong because shahtoosh, the wool of the Tibetan antelope, was the subject of Operation Softgold. Option D is wrong because red sanders, the protected timber of the Eastern Ghats, has been tackled through separate drives and state task forces rather than through Operation Clean Art.

The correct answer is B, Eichhornia crassipes, the water hyacinth. It is a free-floating plant of South American origin that was brought to India for its attractive flowers. It multiplies very fast and forms dense mats over ponds, canals and wetlands, shutting out light and oxygen, killing fish, blocking navigation and increasing water loss, and its destruction of the water bodies of Bengal earned it the nickname. Option A, lantana, is an invasive shrub of forests and grasslands but it is terrestrial and carries no such name. Option C, Prosopis juliflora or vilayati babool, is a thorny tree of dry regions introduced from Mexico and Central America. Option D, Parthenium hysterophorus, is the congress grass, a terrestrial weed of waste ground notorious for causing skin allergy rather than for choking water bodies.

The correct answer is B, recalcitrant seeds. These seeds lose their viability when their moisture content is reduced, so they cannot be kept in the cold rooms of a seed bank; mango, jackfruit, coconut, cocoa and most tropical fruit trees are examples, and they are conserved instead in field gene banks, as tissue cultures or in cryobanks. Option A is wrong because orthodox seeds, such as wheat, rice, maize and most pulses, can be dried to a low moisture content and frozen, and they are the seeds that gene banks store for decades. Option C is wrong because dormancy is a resting state from which a seed can germinate when conditions are right, and it says nothing about storage. Option D is wrong because hybrid refers to parentage, not to storage behaviour.

The correct answer is D, a botanical garden. Ex-situ conservation means keeping a species, or only its germplasm, outside its natural habitat, which is what a botanical garden, a zoo, an aquarium, a seed bank, a gene bank or a conservation breeding centre does. Option A is wrong because a biosphere reserve conserves a whole landscape with its core, buffer and transition zones, which is in-situ conservation. Option B is wrong because a wildlife sanctuary protects animals where they live, with limited human activity allowed, again in-situ. Option C is wrong because a national park is the strictest form of in-situ protection, where grazing and private rights are not permitted. The quickest test is to ask whether the species stays in its habitat; if it does, the method is in-situ.

The correct answer is C, Azadirachta indica, the neem tree. Neem is native to the Indian subcontinent, so by definition it cannot be an alien species here, however widely it has been planted; a species is alien only outside its natural range. Option A, Lantana camara, is an ornamental shrub from tropical America that now invades dry forests, grasslands and tiger habitat across India. Option B, Mikania micrantha, is the mile-a-minute vine from Central and South America that smothers plantations and natural regeneration in the North East and the Western Ghats. Option D, Prosopis juliflora or vilayati babool, came from Mexico and Central America and has taken over large stretches of arid and semi-arid land, lowering the water table and displacing native thorn scrub. Only neem is Indian in origin.

The correct answer is B, Earthworm. The earthworm is called the farmer's friend because its work keeps soil fit for crops. As it burrows it loosens the soil and lets air and water reach the roots, and the castings it leaves behind are rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, so the topsoil is steadily renewed. Charles Darwin called earthworms nature's ploughmen for this reason. Farmers use the same habit in vermicomposting, where species such as Eisenia fetida turn cattle dung and crop waste into fine manure within a few weeks. A is wrong because the cockroach is a household pest that spoils food and carries germs. C is wrong because the honey bee is useful as a pollinator and for honey, but the name friend of the farmer is not given to it. D is wrong because the housefly spreads diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Exam tip: earthworm, the farmer's friend and nature's plough, used in vermicompost.

The correct answer is C, about minus 196 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, at which all metabolic activity in the stored material stops and the germplasm can be kept for very long periods without change. Option A is wrong because minus 20 degrees is the temperature of ordinary long-term seed storage in a gene bank, not of cryopreservation. Option B is wrong because minus 80 degrees is the range of deep freezers used for vaccines and biological samples. Option D is wrong because minus 273 degrees Celsius is close to absolute zero, which laboratory cryopreservation does not use. Remember the pair: minus 20 degrees for seed banks and minus 196 degrees for cryobanks, because examiners place the two figures in the same set of options.

The correct answer is D, Ecotone. An ecotone is the transition zone where two different ecosystems meet and mix, such as the belt between a grassland and a forest, an estuary between a river and the sea, or a mangrove strip between land and ocean. It holds species of both neighbouring communities along with a few of its own, so the number of species and their density are often higher in it. This crowding at the edge is called the edge effect, and species found only in such a belt are called edge species. A is wrong because the ecosphere means the whole living world of the earth taken together with its environment. B is wrong because ecoboundary is not a term used in ecology. C is wrong because ecotwin is not an ecological term either. Exam tip: tie ecotone to the edge effect, and keep ecotone, a zone, apart from ecocline, a gradual gradient.

The correct answer is B, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The Wild Life (Protection) Amendment Act of 2022 brought the parent Act into line with India obligations under CITES, reorganised its schedules and for the first time inserted an express power allowing the Central Government to regulate or prohibit the import, trade, possession and proliferation of invasive alien species. Option A is wrong because the Forest (Conservation) Act deals with the diversion of forest land to non-forest use. Option C is wrong because the Biological Diversity Act governs access to biological resources and benefit sharing, and it was itself amended in 2023 for different purposes. Option D is wrong because the Environment (Protection) Act is the umbrella law under which pollution and environmental standards are notified, not a wildlife trade statute.

The correct answer is B, Kuno National Park, in the Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh, where the first eight cheetahs from Namibia were released into enclosures on 17 September 2022. Kuno was chosen for its open grassland and scrub, the habitat a cheetah hunts in, and for its prey base of chital and chinkara. Option A is wrong because Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh is a tiger reserve of dense sal forest, not cheetah country. Option C is wrong because Ranthambore in Rajasthan is likewise a tiger reserve. Option D is wrong because Gir in Gujarat holds the Asiatic lion, and Kuno had in fact been prepared years earlier as a possible second home for those lions. Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary has since been readied as a second cheetah site.

The correct answer is B, Rajasthan. The breeding centres stand in the Jaisalmer region, near the Desert National Park, which holds the largest surviving population of the bird, and they are run by the state forest department with the Wildlife Institute of India: eggs are collected from the wild, hatched in incubators and the chicks reared for release. Option A is wrong, though Gujarat has bustard habitat in the Kutch grasslands and is part of the recovery programme. Option C is wrong because Maharashtra has a small population in the Nannaj area of Solapur but no breeding centre of this kind. Option D is wrong because Madhya Pradesh is associated with the cheetah reintroduction at Kuno, not with the bustard. The Great Indian Bustard is the state bird of Rajasthan, which makes the pairing easier to remember.

The correct answer is B, July. Van Mahotsav is observed in the first week of July, which is chosen because the monsoon has arrived over most of the country by then and a newly planted sapling has the best chance of surviving. It was started in 1950 on the initiative of K. M. Munshi, then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food, as a people's festival of tree planting rather than a departmental exercise. Option A, March, carries World Forestry Day on the twenty-first and World Water Day on the twenty-second, but not Van Mahotsav. Option C, October, carries Wildlife Week in its first week, which is a separate observance devoted to animals. Option D, December, is not associated with any national planting programme and falls in the dry season when survival of saplings is poor. Examiners frequently place Wildlife Week and Van Mahotsav in the same option set, so fix July for trees and October for wildlife.

The correct answer is A, Achatina fulica. This large land snail is native to East Africa and reached India long ago, probably through the trade in ornamental plants and shells. It feeds on a very wide range of garden and field plants, breeds rapidly and is listed among the worst invasive species of the world. Option B, Clarias gariepinus, is the African catfish, an invasive fish whose culture is banned in India because it preys heavily on native species. Option C, Pila globosa, is the native Indian apple snail of ponds and paddy fields and is therefore not an invader at all. Option D, Spodoptera frugiperda, is the fall armyworm, an American moth whose caterpillars attack maize and which was first reported in Karnataka in 2018.

The correct answer is C, Maharashtra. Bor Tiger Reserve lies in the Wardha district of Maharashtra, near Nagpur, and is the smallest tiger reserve in the country; it is part of the central Indian landscape that also holds Tadoba-Andhari, Pench, Melghat and Navegaon-Nagzira. Option A is wrong because Madhya Pradesh has Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Panna, Satpura, Pench and Sanjay-Dubri, but not Bor. Option B is wrong because Chhattisgarh has Indravati, Udanti-Sitanadi and Achanakmar. Option D is wrong because Odisha has Simlipal and Satkosia. A trap worth noting is Pench, which is a tiger reserve in both Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, so a question naming only Pench is incomplete unless the state is given. Bor was first a wildlife sanctuary and was raised to the status of a tiger reserve later, which is why older lists of reserves do not carry its name at all, and candidates who learnt only the older list miss this question.

The correct answer is B, Kuno National Park in the Sheopur area of Madhya Pradesh, where cheetahs brought from Namibia and South Africa were released from 2022 under the cheetah reintroduction project; the cheetah had been declared extinct in India in 1952. Option A is wrong because Kanha, in the Maikal range, is a tiger reserve best known for saving the hard-ground barasingha. Option C is wrong because Bandhavgarh is a tiger reserve famous for its fort and its high density of tigers. Option D is wrong because Panna is remembered for the successful reintroduction of tigers after the local population was wiped out, which is a different programme often confused with the cheetah project. Kuno had earlier been prepared as a second home for the Asiatic lion of Gir.

The correct answer is A, Perform, Achieve and Trade, usually shortened to PAT, a market-based scheme under the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency. Each designated consumer in an energy-intensive industry such as cement, steel, aluminium, fertiliser or thermal power is given a specific energy consumption target; a plant that beats its target earns ESCerts, and a plant that misses it must buy them, which the power exchanges make possible. B is wrong because UJALA is the scheme that distributed LED bulbs at low cost to households, a direct efficiency programme with no certificates. C is wrong because FAME India subsidises electric and hybrid vehicles and charging infrastructure. D is wrong because Saubhagya was the household electrification scheme that aimed to connect every willing unelectrified home. Only PAT trades certificates, which is why it is treated as the forerunner of India's carbon market.

The correct answer is B, Geneva. The CITES Secretariat is based at Geneva in Switzerland and is administered under the United Nations Environment Programme; it services the Conference of the Parties, maintains the appendices and advises member states on permits and enforcement. Option A, Nairobi, is wrong as the Secretariat location although it is the global headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme itself, which makes it the commonest wrong choice here. Option C, Gland, is wrong because that Swiss town houses the International Union for Conservation of Nature and also the Ramsar Convention Secretariat. Option D, Washington, is wrong but tempting, since the convention was negotiated and signed there in 1973 and is called the Washington Convention for that reason; the city of signature is not the seat of the Secretariat.

The correct answer is B, combining atmospheric nitrogen with oxygen to form oxides of nitrogen. The very high temperature of a lightning discharge supplies enough energy to break the triple bond of nitrogen, and the atoms join oxygen to give nitric oxide and then nitrogen dioxide, which dissolve in rain as nitrous and nitric acid and reach the soil as nitrate; this is physical or atmospheric fixation, a small share of the total. Option A is wrong because lightning has no such effect on soil bacteria. Option C is wrong because humus is broken down slowly by microbes, not by lightning. Option D is wrong because phosphate is released by the weathering of rock, which belongs to the sedimentary phosphorus cycle and not to the nitrogen cycle at all.

The correct answer is A, the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park at Darjeeling, the highest altitude zoo in India, which runs recognised conservation breeding programmes for the red panda, the snow leopard and the Himalayan wolf, and has released captive-bred red pandas into the Singalila landscape. Option B is wrong because the Mysuru zoo of 1892, though among the oldest and most visited, is not a high-altitude zoo and is known for its wide range of exotic species. Option C is wrong because the Alipore zoo in Kolkata is the oldest in the country, dating from 1876. Option D is wrong because Nandankanan near Bhubaneswar is famous for white tigers and for being the first zoo in India to breed the gharial in captivity, which is itself a frequently asked fact.

The correct answer is B, bones. Strontium lies just below calcium in the same group of the periodic table and behaves chemically like it, so strontium-90 taken in through milk, water or food is deposited in bone and in teeth in place of calcium. With a half-life of about twenty-nine years it then irradiates the bone marrow for decades and can cause bone cancer and leukaemia. A is wrong because the thyroid gland is the organ that concentrates iodine-131, which is why potassium iodide tablets are given after a reactor accident. C is wrong because the liver is a general site of storage for several heavy metals and for plutonium, but not the specific target of strontium. D is wrong because the retina is damaged by ultraviolet and by very high doses of radiation generally, and no isotope collects there selectively.