Chapter 5-6 Flashcards
How quickly does a forest recover from a fire?
After 13 years, it can be thriving.
Establishing of a biotic or abiotic community in a barren (plantless and soilless or bare rock) habitat is called?
Primary Succession
Establishing of a community in a previously inhabited area is called?
Secondary Succession
What are the trophic levels for different parts of the food chain?
Plants level 1, herbivores level 2, primary carnivores level 3, and secondary carnivores r level 4.
What is the food chain order?
Plants, Herbivores, Primary Carnivores, and then secondary carnivores.
Plants turn inorganic compounds into what?
Organic compounds
An organism that can convert inorganic matter such as a carbon dioxide into nutritional organic matter is called?
Autotroph
Name the three heterotrophs
Herbivores, Primary Carnivores, and secondary carnivores.
What is the difference between secondary carnivores and primary carnivores?
Secondary carnivores feed on carnivores, while primary carnivores only eat herbivores.
What do heterotrophs do?
Consume organic matter and unable to produce it.
What are all the food chains in an ecosystem called?
Food web
In healthy ecosystem does P ≅ R
Yes, but P tends to exceed R a little
What do you call a food chain that’s like this:
🌿 ➡️ 🐄 ➡️ 🦈
⬇️
➡️💩⬅️
⬇️⬆️
Detritivores or decomposers
Detritus food chain
What do Detritivores eat?
Excrement
What is this the Formula for:
Co2 + H20 ➡️CH2O + O2
Production of organic matter from inorganic compounds
Consumed organic matter goes to?
Biomass, excretion, or Respiration
CH2O + O2 –> CO2 + H2O
Formula for where organic matter goes to
Production of organic matter from inorganic compounds using either sunlight (photosynthesis) or an oxidation-reduction reaction (chemosynthesis) as an energy source. Autotrophic production.
Primary production
Production of one kind of organic matter from some other kind of organic matter. Heterotrophic production.
Secondary Production
The efficiency with which energy is transferred from one trophic level to the next?
Ecological Efficiency
Why do ecological efficiencies tend to be higher in an aquatic system?
Most aquatic organisms are cold-blooded, and they invest less energy in supporting their body weight. I.E. no body warming.
Does biomass decrease or increase from the bottom to the top of trophic levels?
decrease
Biomass numbers for producers, first level consumers, second level consumer, and third level consumer:
100,10,1, & 1/10
Examples of biomagnification?
DDT insecticide used in farming and Japan waste containing mercury dumped into water both led to biomagnification
Producers?
Produce organic matter may be heterotrophic or autotrophic
Consumers?
Consume organic matter
Biomagnification:
The ecological efficiency in a food chain is 15%. A pollutant (X) is transferred from one trophic level to the next with an efficiency of 60%. The magnification factor between trophic levels is a factor of 4 (60% divided by 15%). If the concentration of X on trophic level 2 is 12 ppm (parts per million), what is the concentration of X on trophic level 1?
What is the concentration of X on trophic level 3?
3 on level 1 and 48 on level 3
The ecological efficiency in a food chain is 10%. A pollutant (X) is transferred from one trophic level to the next with an efficiency of 50%. If the concentration of X on trophic level 2 is 20 ppm (parts per million), what is the concentration of X on trophic level 1?
What is the concentration of X on trophic level 4?
On level 1: 4 and on level 4, 500.
The accumulation of higher and higher concentrations of potentially toxic chemicals in organisms.
Bioaccumulation
Bioaccumulation, occurring through several levels of a food chain
Biomagnification
What is classified based on climate and vegetation?
Biomes
Temperature and rainfall are abiotic factors for what?
Terrestrial biomes
Salinity, light, temperature, 02, and permanence of water are abiotic factors for what?
Aquatic biomes
Dry tundra and moist tundra are?
Polar and alpine
Cool tundra, cool desert, temperate desert, and hot desert are all?
Dry
Tropical forest, grasslands, and hot desert are all?
Hot
What percent of photosynthesis is done in aquatic systems?
50%
Who starts a biome’s recovery from disturbances?
Plants must, as they are the autotrophs.
Six stages of forest growth?
Bare rock, mosses grasses, grasses perennials, woody pioneers, fast-growing trees, and climax forest.
What appears first on bare rocks in forest succession?
Lichen (fungus or alga or cyanobacterium)
What secretes weak carbonic acids that extract nutrients from rocks and weathers them.
Lichens and algae
Large cracks formed by algae and lichens support the growth of what?
Grasses and small shrubs
What is one of the plants that sprouts first after a volcano eruption in Hawaii?
‘Ohi’a Lehua
How do ground fires keep pine forest from becoming deciduous forests?
Ground fires kill competition from other species.
What triggers secondary succession, which requires preexisting soil?
Forest fire, hurricane, agriculture, and forestry
Is smokey the bear correct that all forest first are bad?
No smokey wrong bear!
How do lodge pine seedlings like those in the Yellowstone National Park grow?
They germinate (release seeds) only if burned
Give three examples of species well-adapted to periodic fires and one that isn’t?
Pines, grasses, redwoods, and oaks aren’t.
Ability of an ecosystem to return to normal functions after a disturbance is called?
Resilience
What type of succession is a succession that occurs on an old farm?
Secondary succession as there is soil
Why does Iceland have little trees, excluding their efforts to plant more in national parks?
Clear-cutting
Lakes and ponds always eventually fill with?
Sediment
How long does natural eutrophication take?
Centuries
Cultural eutrophication, which is accelerated eutrophication, takes how long?
Decades
Excess nutrients in a body of water normally from land run off which cause plant growth, sediment filling up, and animals dying is called?
Eutrophication
What type of moss does not decay easily?
Sphagnum moss (peat moss)
What do you call the regulation of atmospheric chemical composition, such as UVB Protection?
Gas regulation
What do you call the regulation of biologically meditated climatic processes e.g. global temperature, precipitation, & green house gases?
Climate Regulation
What do you call the regulation of capacitance, damping, and integrity of ecosystem response to environmental fluctuations e.g., natural disasters
Disturbance regulation
What do you call the regulation of hydrological flows?
Water regulation
What do you call the storage and retention of water?
Water supply
What do you call the retention of soil within an ecosystem?
Erosion control and sediment retention
What do you call soil-formation processes, e.g. weathering and accumulation of lichen
Nutrient Cycling
What do you call the recovery of mobile nutrients and the removal or breakdown of excess nutrients and compounds
Waste treatment
Movement of floral gametes is called
Pollination
What do you call trophic-dynamic regulations of populations, e.g., keystone predators balancing?
Biological control
Habitat for resident and transient populations e.g., nurseries, migratory species’ habitat
Refuges
What do you call the portion of primary production extractable as food?
Food production
What do you call the portion of primary production extractable as raw materials?
Raw materials
What do you call the sources of unique biological materials and products?
Genetic Resources
Provisions of opportunities for recreational activities e.g. ecotourism is called?
Recreation
Provision of opportunities for noncommercial uses is called?
Cultural
What does CO 2 prevent?
The earth from freezing
What are three natural “mother nature” methods of lowering CO2 in the atmosphere?
Volcanoes, photosynthesis, and carbonic acid weathering rocks lowers CO2.
What creates carbonic acid?
Carbon dioxide and water
What is the fact that the sun gets brighter over time, but the earth itself has no evidence of being frozen when the sun was dimmer, called?
The faint/pale sun Paradox
What will get bigger and absorb Venus, Mercury, and kill all life on earth?
Mr. Sun
How long does it take for 1 inch (2.54 cm) of topsoil to naturally develop after being washed off?
100–1000 years
Where does phosphate go?
Into sediments
Nitrogen moving from the air to the soil, from the soil to living organisms, and from decomposing living organisms back into the air is called?
Nitrogen Cycle
A water table describes the boundary between water-saturated ground and unsaturated ground. Below the water table, rocks, and soil are full of water. Pockets of water existing below the water table are called aquifers. What is this called?
A water table aquifer
What do you call an underground layer which holds groundwater under pressure, causing the water level in the well to rise to a point where the pressure is equal to the weight of water putting it under pressure?
Artesian aquifer
Pumping water too fast from an aquifer can cause?
Salt water to leak into the fresh water
Benefits of reusing waste water?
Expanding habitats for wildlife or recreational landscapes, e.g. Incline village Nevada, or Golf course Lanai Hawaii, educational experiences, & used for vineyards to make wine e.g. California.
Ecosystems should be considered when considering land use changes. What is the conservative estimate of the value of ecosystems?
$40 trillion
How many species have been discovered and described, rounded?
14 million
What does HIPPO, an acronym for reasons why species are going extinct, stand for?
Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, Population(human), and over exploitation
Is it normal for species to go extinct?
Yes
Has species going extinct been accelerated recently?
Yes
Why do we care that species are going extinct?
Because they can cure disease.
How many species of birds went extinct in North America between 1642 and 2001?
631
Passengers pigeons went nearly extinct in the early 20th century, though they used to be 3-5 billion because of?
Humans hunting them, e.g., overexploitation
There were 60 million buffalo in 1492, but only 750 by 1890, through habitat restoration and saving them the population became?
360,000
Whooping crane, birds in 1870 had a population of merely 1,300-1400, but were restored to a population of roughly 800 today. How many were there before 1492?
10,000
An attempt is being made to establish a non-migratory colony of Whooping Cranes in Louisiana’s White Lake Wetlands Conservation Area has how many birds?
70
Of the released whooping cranes, how many were hunted?
10% of 147
How much was a man fined for killing a whopping crane, in addition to a 5-year ban on possessing firearms?
25,000
Are whooping cranes still endangered?
Yes
Lake Erie water snake, was endangered and limited to 1000 individuals because of intense human killing and loss of habitat now
12,000 no longer threatened
Sources of food and raw materials, sources of medicines and pharmaceuticals, recreational, aesthetic, and scientific value are what type of value of biodiversity
Instrumental
Intrinsic value of biodiversity is defined?
Value for its own sake
What does it mean that agricultural crops are cultivars?
That they have been fine-tuned to have little genetic variation
Sap sucking aphids attack root of what and nearly wiped it out in the late 19th century?
European Vineyards
If they failed to use American rootstock to solve the issue, what would have been the outcome?
No wine industry in Europe and most places
Plan A: bury a live toad under each vine to draw out the “poison” was the failed solution to?
Sap-sucking aphids (Phylloxera vastatrix)
Plan B the successful solution was to graft a Vitis vinifera (European wine grape) shoot onto the roots of what?
A resistant Vitis aestivalis or other American native species
Modern agricultural relies on 30 crops, but what are the three that account for 50% of food production?
Wheat, Maize, and rice
How many plants could potentially be used for food, e.g., winged bean?
30,000
Slide 16 cries
True or false: Virtually all drugs derived from natural products have come from terrestrial plants.
true
How many plants have been identified as having anticancer properties?
Over 3,000
What microorganisms are largely unexplored and unclassified.
Marine
What percent of the earth’s surface is ocean?
70%-80%
Can the earth sustain 10 billion?
Unknown
What type of species are at the greatest risk in the U.S.?
Mussels, crayfish, fish, and amphibians are all species that depend on freshwater habitats.
Virtually all species that ever existed have gone extinct. The current rate of species extinction is blank to blank times higher than past rates?
100 to 1000 times
What causes 36% of known extinctions?
Habitat change e.g., stream hardening
The number of animals killed on roadways now far exceeds the number killed by what. More than blank animals per day become roadkill in the United States.
More are killed on roadways then by hunters and over 1 million are killed every day.
Why do animals get killed on roads?
Because they aren’t used to roads and don’t know how to cross them.
Between 100 million and 1 billion birds die every year, and a separate estimated 5–50 million birds die each year from what respectively?
From crashing into glass windows for the former and by colliding with telecommunications towers for the latter.
By what percent has global forest cover been reduced?
By 40%
The permanent reduction in the productivity of arid, semiarid, and seasonally dry areas is called? Also name a potential thing that could cause it?
Desertification and overgrazing
Fragmentation leaves not enough forest for?
Bears & the like.
What do you call it when parts of a habitat are destroyed, leaving behind small, unconnected areas?
Fragmentation
Chinese green Gooseberries were marketed as what?
Kiwifruit in 1962
Fire ants attack birds, rodents, and larger mammals in swarms. What is their projected range?
From California to Florida e.g., south of U.S.A.
The invasive species Water hyacinth, which
ruins, freshwater lakes, were first brought to the U.S. in 1884 – Cotton Exposition in New Orleans. What defeats it?
Mottled water hyacinth weevil
Name a mostly harmless worldwide invasive species that first appeared in Louisiana in 1955?
The cattle egret
Where are cattle egrets mostly found?
Africa, South America, & North America
What are some of the worst invasive species in North America? What is the most invasive globally?
Rats are the most invasive globally. In North America, fire ants, house mouse, Norway rat, wild boar, starling, house cat, kudzu, and water hyacinths.
Cats kill as many as 2.4 billion native birds annually in the US. What type of cats do this?
Unowned/stray cats cause most of the mortality
What country still uses mercury (beyond tooth, fillings) and what for?
China uses it as a catalyst for plastics
What are the four truly sustainable energies?
Wind energy, solar energy, hydraulic energy, and nuclear fusion.
What six countries use the most energy per capita from highest to lowest?
Qatar, Canada, U.S.A., Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
Does Germany, china, or USA have higher co2? Who has the lowest?
USA has highest and China has lowest despite having 4x or 5x USA population.
Why is USA the only country lowering C02 usage?
Because we build less coal burning power plants as other more sustainable methods are more cost-effective.
Annual CO2 from highest to lowest out of china, USA, Russia, India, Japan, and Germany?
China, USA, (recently surpassed Russia roughly 2009) India, Russia, Japan, and Germany
The black rhino is often killed by poachers for its horn, as it is prized in traditional Asian medicine and as ornamentation. Is this illegal?
Yes, it is illegal
What is the name of the USA act that forbids interstate commerce in illegally harvested plants and animals, and when was it enacted?
Lacey Act was passed in 1900
What does the USA’s endangered species act of 1973 do?
Provides for protection of species considered to be threatened or endangered
What is the name of the act that prohibits the taking of marine mammals and enacts a moratorium on the import, export, and sale of any marine mammal, along with any marine mammal part or product within the United States?
Marine Mammal Protection Act - 1972
Japan and Norway, longyearbyen, svalbard, hunt and eat what?
Whales legally and the current species they hunt is not in danger of going extinct.
CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) – international agreement, early 1970s, meant?
Don’t trade endangered species internationally
When was international trade of ivory banned?
1989
Who refused to ratify the law of sea trade and the convention on biological diversity in 1992?
USA Senate
Convention on Biological Diversity – 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro did what?
Assures that wealthy nations cannot mine the genetic resources of other countries or patent products that indigenous people use.
In the United States today, the principal use of mercury is what?
Dental fillings
The barrier holding the wastewater from a pulp mill in a treatment lagoon breaks, and the wastewater runs into the Pearl River. The next day, there are thousands of dead fish in the Pearl River. What is the likely cause of the deaths of the fish?
Suffocation as algae blooms suffocate fish and other marine life.
Which of the following kinds of property rights is associated with the Tragedy of the Commons?
Open access
Rice, wheat, and corn are three crops that account for what percent of global food demands?
50%
