Previous Year Questions

TLS Online TPP Program

QUESTION ID:1

The fishermen, ___ the flood victims owed their lives, were rewarded by the govemment.

QUESTION ID:2

Some students were not involved in the strike. If the above statement is hue, which of the following conclusions is/are logically necessary?
1. Some who were involved in the suite were students.
2. No student was involved in the suite.
3. At least one student was involved in the suite.
4. Some who were not involved in the suite were students.

QUESTION ID:3

The radius as well as the height of a circular cone increases by 10%. The percentage increase in its volume is ---

QUESTION ID:4

Five numbers 10, 7, 5, 4 and 2 are to be awninged in a sequence from left to right following the directions given below:
1. No two odd or even numbers are next to each other.
2. The second number from the left is exactly half of the left-most member.
3. The middle number is exactly twice the right-most member.
Which is the second member from the right?

QUESTION ID:5

Until Iran came along, India had never been _______ in kabaddi.

QUESTION ID:6

Since the last one year·, after a 125 basis point reduction in repo rate by the Rese1ve Bank of India, banking institutions have been making a demru1d to reduce interest rates on small saving schemes. Finally, the govemment announced yesterday a reduction in interest rates on small saving schemes to bring them on pru· with fixed deposit interest rates.
Which one of the following statements can be inferred from the given passage?

QUESTION ID:7

In a country of 1400 million population, 70% own mobile phones. Among the mobile phone owners, only 294 million access the Internet. Among these Internet users, only half buy goods from e-commerce portals. What is the percentage of these buyers in the country?

QUESTION ID:8

The nomenclature of Hindustani music has changed over the centmi.es. Since the medieval period dhrupad styles were identified as banes. Tenus like gayaki and baa} were used to refer to vocal and instrumental styles, respectively. With the institutionalization of music education the te1m gharana because acceptable. Gharana originally referred to hereditary musicians from a particular· lineage, including disciples and grand disciples.
Which one of the following pairings is NOT correct?

QUESTION ID:9

Two trains started at 7AM from the same point. The first train travelled n01ih at a speed of 80kmlh and the second train travelled south at a speed of 100 km/h. The time at which they were 540 km apart is AM.

QUESTION ID:10

"I read somewhere that in ancient times the prestige of a kingdom depended upon the member of taxes that it was able to levy on its people. It was very much like the prestige of a head-hunter in his own community."

Based on the paragraph above, the prestige of a head-hunter depended upon ____ _

QUESTION ID:11

Which of the following is NOT an example of cooperative behavior?

QUESTION ID:12

In a simple linear regression, which of the following statements represents the principle underlying the estimation of the slope and intercept?

QUESTION ID:13

According to MacArthur and Wilson's theory of island biogeography, the number of species on an island is a balance between

QUESTION ID:14

A researcher wants to sample ant diversity in a landscape consisting of riverine valleys and plateaus. Which among the following is the best sampling strategy for her to employ?

QUESTION ID:15

The rates of non-synonymous and synonymous change per site are dN and dS respectively. Which of the following mechanisms explains the evolution of a gene with dN /dS = 0.2?

QUESTION ID:16

Which of the following assumptions allows us to use molecular clocks to estimate species divergence times?

QUESTION ID:17

A large Population of individuals in a particular population of humans carry the allele for Colour-blindness. Assuming colour-blindness does not confer any evolutionary advantage,
which of the following mechanisms CANNOT explain the unusual abundance of this allele?

QUESTION ID:18

The evolutionary change in the timing of development is known as

QUESTION ID:19

Which of the following habitats is best suited for infrasound (low frequency) communication in animals?

QUESTION ID:20

Which of the following is typical of the eyes of a nocturnal insect?

QUESTION ID:21

Gut passage time is defined as the time taken from ingestion to excretion of a food item.
Which among the following animals has the longest gut passage time?

QUESTION ID:22

A researcher found n number of woody species in a one hectare tropical forest plot. He employs the same method in another one hectare plot in the same forest. Based on the principle of species area curves, the expected number of new species in the second plot is

QUESTION ID:23

A phylogenetic study finds that certain plants of peninsular  India are more closely related to those in Australia than to those in China. Which of the following statements best explains this result?

QUESTION ID:24

The pattern of net primary productivity in a year for two grassland habitats (P and Q) is shown below. Which of the following statements is consistent with the figure?
high


QUESTION ID:25

Which of the following statements best explains the patterns of leaf-litter decomposition over time shown in the figure below?


QUESTION ID:26

To compare biomass of a fish species in two lakes, A and B, a researcher records live- weights of 30 individuals from each lake. She assumes that these two datasets are normally distributed and have equal variances. She calculates



where :XA and xb ru·e mean values from the respective lakes, and s is the pooled standard error. What is this quantity Q?

QUESTION ID:27

While developing his the01y of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin was influenced by the work of

QUESTION ID:28

Weakly-electric fish typically produce electric voltages of less than 1 volt for communication and navigation. Which of the following features is NOT a characteristic of
weakly-electric fish?

QUESTION ID:29

Match the combination of primates and trees to the state/union territory where they can be found.

QUESTION ID:30

Which of the following crops should show the LOWEST proportional increase in photosynthetic rate under rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere?

QUESTION ID:31

Which among the following is the best indicator of the precision with which a population parmneter is estimated?

QUESTION ID:32

Which of the following hormones regulates moulting in arthropods?

QUESTION ID:33

A study found that grazing decreased species richness when productivity was low, and increased species richness when productivity was high. Which of the following figures best represents this result? ill the figure, the dotted line represents species richness in grazed plots and the solid line represents species richness in plots without grazing.

QUESTION ID:34

The mean height of students in a class (number of students, n=10) was initially estimated to be 6 feet and 6 inches. Later an error was detected, where one boy's height was recorded as 10 feet taller than his actual height. The correct mean height of the students in the class is __ inches (round off to 1 decimal place).

QUESTION ID:35

Two true-breeding lines of a moth, one with black wings and the other with red wings, are crossed. All of the resulting offspring in the F 1 generation had red wings. These offspring are crossed to produce the F2 generation of moths where the expected fraction of moths with black wings in the population is __ (round off to two decimal places).

QUESTION ID:36

A teacher proposed a null hypothesis (H0) that there is no difference in the mean heights of boys and girls in his class. His alterative hypothesis (Ha) was that boys are taller than girls.
The figure below shows the probability distribution, i.e. probability density function, of the difference in the mean height of boys and girls if the null hypothesis were hue. The observed mean difference in heights is shown by the solid black circle. The dotted line represents the range 11 ± 2 a whereas the solid line shows the range 11 ± 3 a.
Assuming a significance level of 0.05, which of the following conclusions is correct?

QUESTION ID:37

Females in many birds and mammals mate with multiple males, in addition to their paired- male. Which of the following is an INCORRECT adaptive explanation for such extra-pair mating?

QUESTION ID:38

A researcher hypothesized that females of a bird species prefer to mate with long-tailed males. To test this hypothesis, she assigned male birds of similar tail lengths to one of the following four treatments:
1. Intact - tails left unmanipulated
2. Re-attached - tails cut and re-attached without any change in length
3. Shmiened - tails cut, shmiened and re-attached
4. Elongated - tails cut, elongated and re-attached
She measured mating success of these experimental birds and the results from this are shown below. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. Which of the following inferences are consistent with these results?
i. Experimental manipulation of tails decreased male mating success
ii. Females preferred to mate with males with short tails
iii. Females preferred to mate with males with long tails

QUESTION ID:39

Highly repetitive sequences are most likely to be prevalent in regions of the genome with ___ recombination rate and originate via ___ crossing over. Choose the right pair of words that completes this statement correctly.

QUESTION ID:40

Which of the following is correct about first and second derivatives at points P, Q and R for f(x) = sin(x) shown below?


QUESTION ID:41

Which of the following is NOT a proximate explanation for group cohesion among animals?

QUESTION ID:42

Which of the following statements is LEAST likely to explain the evolution of dispersal?

QUESTION ID:43

Which of the following plots describes the expected relationship between population size (y-axis) and generation time (x-axis) in vei1ebrates? Here, each data point represents a different ve1tebrate species and the generation time is defined as the average interval between two generations.

QUESTION ID:44

Six different species of centipedes represented by the following phylogenetic tree have these single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at a given locus. Assuming maximum parsimony (or minimum evolutionary changes), what is the most likely nucleotide in the ancestor 'P'?

QUESTION ID:45

Garter snakes have evolved resistance to the poisonous secretions of the rough-skinned newts. The following figure describes poison production in newts and the resistance (measured as amount of poison tolerated) in garter snakes in three different geographical areas. Given this information, which of the following statements is correct regarding the evolution of poison resistance in garter snakes?

QUESTION ID:46

Many bird species show cooperative breeding. Offspring are cared for by parents and other individuals (helpers) who are typically offspring from previous years. Which of the following is NOT an appropriate evolutionary explanation for why helpers do not leave and breed on their own?

QUESTION ID:47

The relative performance of amphibians adapted to tropical (dashed line) and temperate (solid line) climates as a function of temperature is shown below. Assume that global warming will result in an equal increase in mean temperatures over the next 30 years in both regions. Which of the following statements about the effects of global warming on these two amphibians is most likely?

QUESTION ID:48

Global warming potential of different greenhouse gases (C02, CH4 N20, etc) is dete1mined by their:
P: ability to absorb infrared radiation
Q: concentration in the atmosphere
R: residence time in the atmosphere
S: source of origin (whether natural, or anthropogenic)

QUESTION ID:49

A hornbill foraging exclusively on figs in a tropical forest spends an average of 36 minutes on a tree before moving to the next tree. The density of fig trees in the forest decreases by half. In accordance with optimal foraging the my, which of following represents a possible duration (in minutes) that the hornbill may spend per tree?

QUESTION ID:50

Type-I errors in statistical tests represent false positives, where a time null hypothesis is falsely rejected. Type-IT errors represent false negatives where we fail to reject a false null hypothesis. For a given experimental system, increasing sample size will

QUESTION ID:51

Semelparous species are those that produce all of their offspring in a single reproductive event. The survivorship curve of a population of a semelparous species would most likely resemble which of the following?

QUESTION ID:52

Bergmann's rule describes the increase in body size observed in related organisms as we go from the equator to the poles. Which of the following is a possible explanation for this pattern?

QUESTION ID:53

To estimate the number of foxes in an area, a researcher conducted a mark-recapture survey. fu the first survey, he caught and marked 90 foxes. fu his second survey a week later, he caught 120 foxes of which 40 were marked (recaptures). If you are told that the actual number of foxes in this area is 400, which of the following is a plausible explanation for the anomaly in the researcher data?

QUESTION ID:54

Which one of the statements below best describes a plant species with the timing of reproductive events shown in the following figure?


QUESTION ID:55

Match species in column A to its phylogenetically closest relative in column B.

QUESTION ID:56

Under which of the following conditions is rapid pollen tubes growth most likely to evolve?

QUESTION ID:57

Which of the following correctly represents a decreasing order of tree species richness?
P - Dry tropical forests in Maharashtra
Q - Lowland wet tropical forests in Arunachal Pradesh
R - Scrub forest in Rajasthan
S - Wet tropical forests in Kerala

QUESTION ID:58

A forester, pictured below, is trying to measure the height of a tree. Her height is x =1.5 m. She stands y = 10 m away from a tree, from where the angle subtended to the top of the tree is z = 45°. The height of the tree is m (round off to 1 decimal place).

QUESTION ID:59

In a recently discovered fossil, only 0.39% of C14 found in living fossils is present. If the half-life of C14 is 5730 years, the age of the fossil is expected to be years (round
off to the nearest integer).

QUESTION ID:60

A beaker contains a large number of spherical nuts of two types, one with radius 1 cm and the other with 2 cm, in the ratio 2:1. A squirrel picks one nut from a random point in this beaker. Assuming that the beaker is well-mixed, the probability of picking the smaller nut ...........  is (round off to 1 decimal place).

QUESTION ID:61

In a closed population following logistic growth, per capita birth rate band per capita death rated va1y with population size N as b = 0.1- 0.0001N and d = 0.01 + 0.00002N, respectively. The carrying capacity K of this population is __ individuals.

QUESTION ID:62

A population of birds has a 3:2 male to female adult sex ratio at the beginning of the breeding season. During the breeding season, every female produces 8 eggs of which 4 survive to become juveniles. A census at the end of the breeding season accurately estimates the bird population to be 1300 individuals. Assuming no deaths, the number of adult males in this population is individuals.

QUESTION ID:63

The coordinates of P is (0,1), Q is (0,3), R is (2,0) and S is (1,0). The area of the trapezoid PQRS is (round off to 1 decimal place).

QUESTION ID:64

Trees in two patches A and B can disperse seeds to a bare patch C. The probability of a seed being dispersed from A to C is 0.5 and the probability of germination of such a seed is 0.1. Likewise, the probability of a seed being dispersed from B to C is 0.4 and the probability of germination of such a seed is 0.2. If the number of seeds produced in patch A is 100 and that in B is 200, the expected number of germinated seeds in patch C is __

QUESTION ID:65

A bacterial population grows from 106 cells to 5.5 x 107 cells in 20 minutes. Assuming that the growth was not resource limited, the per-capita growth rate of bacteria is __ per minute (round off to 2 decimal places).