Year 12 biology exam question

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Questions

My guess for both would be something to do with the mosquito's place in the food chain.

Also, your answer for #10 is wrong, you haven't made use of the fact that mitochondria DNA, unlike regular DNA, comes from the mother only.

>>207391
I'm almost 100% sure the answer for c) is that they can live long enough to breed future generations of mosquitoes that carry the gene. Otherwise it would be meaningless as the gene would die out in a single generation. For d) it might be that the gene could transfer to anything that eats mosquitoes causing serious problems for those organisms. It's been a while since I did biology courses so I could be remembering gene transfer incorrectly.

>>207563
Nope, both wrong. Mosquitoes take far more than 'a few days' to grow into sexually mature adults, so they're not going to be breeding in that time. And the idea that genes could be transferred by eating something is absolutely laughable.

>>207569
Yeah sorry, I didn't realize it says the larvae will die in a few days, I have no idea how long it takes adults to reproduce but larvae do become adults in a few days. Genes being transferred by eating something is not that strange. Organelles came about from cells consuming other cells after all and bacteria could potentially gene transfer with these. For c) it might be because larvae cannot transmit Dengus fever so there's no negative consequence for existing. Larvae can still be useful by allowing other organisms to consume them and therefore be advantageous. For d) a better answer would be if adult mosquitoes are actually a keystone species in the ecosystem they're introduced to. This could result in the collapse of that ecosystem.

>>207624
>>207569
Lysine-deficient larvae that are alive will compete with healthy larvae, and some healthy larvae will die.