Lab Exam 3 Information

Frequent Questions

1. How do we know if a plant is vascular or non-vascular?

This refers to land plants.  For this exam we have only looked at two large groups of land plants, Bryophytes and ferns and fern allies.  The bryophytes, mosses and liverworts are all non-vascular.  All other terrestrial plants are vascular, thus the ferns and fern allies are vascular. Ferns and fern allies are Psilophyta, Lycophyta, Sphenophyta and Pterophyta.

2. How do we know if it is a sporophyte or gametophyte?

All plants have an alternation of generations between a diploid phase, the sporophyte and a haploid phase the gametophyte.  Gametophytes produce gametes while sporophytes produce spores.  Again we are only looking at two groups of land plants on the lab exam, Bryophytes and the ferns/fern allies.  All bryophytes have a dominate gametophyte, thus the green moss plant and the green liverwort is the gametophyte.  In the ferns and fern allies the sporophyte is the dominate generation, thus the mature fern, Psilotum, Lycopodium, Selaginella and horsetail are sporophytes while the gametophyte is the small heart shaped prothallus.  The only prothallus we looked at was that of the fern.

3. How do we know if the spore of type of reproduction is sexual or asexual in fungi?

Remember the taxonomy of fungi is based on the type of sexual reproduction.  The zygosporangium of the Zygomycota, the ascus and ascospores of the Ascomycota and the basidium and basidiospores of the Basidiomycota.  We studied two examples of asexual spores.  One was the was upright sporangium of the Zygomycota and the conidiospores seen in Penicillium and Aspergillus. 

4. Be sure to review the oogonium of and antheridia of both the Oomycota and the Charaphyta.  Oomycota are fungus-like members of the kingdom Protista and the Charaphyta (Chara) is a  members of the Kingdom Plantae.

Bring a scantron sheet.