Exam 2 Study Guide Flashcards
Mr. Handel mentioned doing experiments in Australia with orchids and their heights. What went on during this experiment and what was the result?
- The orchids all had flowers close to the ground, so Dr. Handel varied the heights of the plants (by putting some up on stands) to see why. Turned out male wasps are the pollinators and the orchid flowers are mimicking female wasps which are always on/in the ground.
- Why have short flowers? Harder for insect to find and the gaseous smell might be harder to perceive
- Height doesn’t make a difference
What are some important facts about orchids and their interesting pollination method?
- Many are common in the the New Jersey pinelands
- They live in the ground and do not have nectar and have a hidden pollen packet to trick the insects
- They are food and reproduction deceptors and are common in Australia
- The male wasps try to mate with the flower and they get pollen on their back to pollinate other flowers
What is a chiloglottis?
A plant that has many similarities as a bug (a mimic such as the orchid)
What is so interesting about the relationship between the thynnid female wasp and the chigolottis?
- The female wasp gets a male by releasing pheromones at the same low heights as the orchids to mate which is why the males sometimes get confused since the orchids have female like features and phermones
Fun Fact! (The female wasp looks for a nearby maggot and lays her eggs on the maggot that acts as a parasite)
What is a Calopogon Tuberosus?
- A type of orchid that has a mimic of anthers that are actually hairs
- The pollen is located lower on the flower to deceive pollinators and then that flower and others can get pollinated
What was the 2nd experiment Mr. Handel did in Australia involving orchid odor?
- Scientists cut up different parts of the orchid flower and put the part of the flower with the pheromones/smell that attracts the male wasps under canisters
- What they found was that the wasps landed on different canisters and found out the the odor is the most important part about the flower/orchid
What is the third experiment Mr. Handel did involving the garden of cucumbers?
- They placed mutant cucumber plants that had yellow cotyledons in the middle of the field and looked at how far the bees spread the pollen.
- Pollinators of this species stay within a short range of the pollen (most in the middle of the field)
Mr. Handel mentioned doing an experiment in staten island with bees. What went on during this experiment?
- 8 sites of plants were observed
- Pollinator attraction to an urban area (landfill). They planted bee-attractive plants at a landfill to see what bees came there, and found high bee species diversity.
Recessive plants around dominant plants (mosaic of plants – space out)
Mr. Handel meantioned doing an experiment with plants surviving in the city. What went on during this experiment?
- Dr. Handel collected seeds from diff urban sites in NJ and planted them at some diff urban sites and at some natural areas to see if seeds grew better or worse depending on where they came from.
- Milkweed, tall goldenrods, white snakeroot, goldenrods, switchgrass in salty & high pH locations
- It didn’t make a difference where these plants grew
- Seeds next to a parkway had the biggest volume of plants than other sites
- Mosaic of microsites - pocket within an environment with unique features, conditions or characteristics; may depend on temperature, humidity, sunlight, nutrient availability, soil, etc.
- Milkweed, tall goldenrods, white snakeroot, goldenrods, switchgrass in salty & high pH locations
What is an ecotype?
A distinct population or genotype within a species that’s adapted to local environmental conditions. One ecotype can interbreed with another ecotype of the same species.
- Stanford University did a study on Achillea flowers that are common in California. How did these plants flower at different locations?
- What did they do for the second part of their experiment?
- They studied Achillea that’s a plant found all over California at different elevations and they took them and grew them in the soil. They recorded how tall the plants were and if they flowered. The ones at the higher elevations were much smaller and they flowered early before it got too cold. The coastal plants did very well and had advantageous traits that made them very tall where it’s warmer. Overall, plants are more adapted better to low elevations.
- They took the high elevation plants and put them in low elevations, and they did much worse and stayed much smaller and many did not flower and died earlier than when they were in the mountains. These plants are not successful in other locations which makes them an ecotype.
Michigan state did a study with Dandelions (Taraxacum) at different microsites. What did they find?
They studied stable microsites in a ditch and they studied disturbed microsites of dandelions that were in a field. The ones in the ditch (stable environment) grew much bigger than the ones in the disturbed field. When switching the locations of both of them, they both died.
- Duke University studied lead tolerance with plant plantago lanceolata by road slides and mines. What did they find in this study?
- What happened when they switched the plants in healthy soil with the one with one that were in lead/zinc soil?
- Duke University studied lead tolerance of plantago Lanceolata and collected them by the side of the road and collected more from 4m and 80m back from the road. He wondered if their was an evolutionary difference between all the locations. What he found was that 4m was the evolutionary difference for lead tolerance.
- They switched plants that had poor soil (with zinc and lead) with ones that had rich soil. Plants from the pasture with healthy soil that were put on the poor soil, did terribly. Likewise, the ones that were on poor soil that were put on the rich soil grew terribly too. It is because they can’t adapt to their new environments.
What happened in the experiment invovling clovers and slugs?
o Clover leaves makes cyanide which the sheep’s eat and is a chemical defense for the plant.
o Ecotype of white clover – clover lives in nettle where slugs eat them and live; sheep only eat clovers
o Selective advantage - characteristics that enables plant to survive and reproduce better than other organisms in a population in a given environment
What is the difference between evolution and fitness?
Evolution- Is a process to generate change
Fitness- The ability to withstand the environmental conditions around you in order to survive and reproduce.
What are the 3 types of case studies
Directional, stabalizing, and disruptive
Describe what directional selection is
A mode of natural selection in which an extreme phenotype is favored over other phenotypes, causing the allele frequency to shift over time in the direction of that phenotype.(There’s a change in the average in the most common size for animals to escape predators)
Describe what stabalizing selection is
Less variation among individuals. A type of natural selection in which genetic diversity decreases and the population mean stabilizes on a particular trait value
Describe what diruptive selection is
Describes changes in population genetics in which extreme values for a trait are favored over intermediate values.
What is the difference between inbreeding and outbreeding?
Inbreeding- The reduced biological fitness in a given population as a result of breeding related individuals
Outbreeding- The practice of introducing unrelated genetic material into a breeding line. It increases genetic diversity, thus reducing the probability of an individual being subject to disease or reducing genetic abnormalities.
What are the advantages of wind dispersal plants and why do they have disruptive selection at different seasons?
- When plants are wind dispersed, they don’t need a bug to rely on which is an advantage
- There is disruptive selection with trees in the fall because their seedlings can’t survive in the fall/winter. Therefore, wind dispersal is a spring phenomena which has favorable weather and rainfall.
- What makes the plant “Jack in the pulpit” (Arisaema Triphyllum) different from other plants in relation to their sex and anatomy?
- What is sequential hermaphroditism?
- The flowers are unisexual, in small plants most if not all the flowers are male, as plants age and grow larger it produces more female flowers. This species flowers from April to June. It is pollinated by flies, which it attracts by smell.
- They turn purple and they mimic mushrooms for flies to lay their eggs in and then they start making fruit. Male flowers have an opening on the bottom of the flower (Smaller). Female flowers don’t have an opening and trap the flies in order to get pollen on them (Bigger) - ) Sequential Hermaphroditism- Change in time of sex expression. They start off male and then become female over time. Sex determination caused by environmental pressures.
What are figs (Ficus Carica)?
They are flavorful fruits and have a unique evolutionary structure with clusters of flowers
Describe the relationship between figs (Ficus Carica) and wasps with respect to their lifecycle
- The fertilized female wasp enters the fig.
- She crawls inside the fig and pollinates some of the female flowers. She lays her eggs inside some of the flowers and dies.
- After weeks of development in their galls, the male wasps emerge before females through holes they produce by chewing the galls. The male wasps then fertilize the females by depositing semen in the hole in the gall.
- The males later return to the females and enlarge the holes to enable the females to emerge and then the males die.
Hybanthus Prunifolium is a mass flowering shrub species mostly found in Panama. What was the result when they grew after 4 days compared to 35 days?
Those that flowered over a short time are favored to have more seeds, greater pollination success, and having fewer seed predators
Hymenaea Courbaril is a tree mostly found in South America. What were the differences of when it was grown in Coasta Rico vs. Puerto Rico?
Why do we care about rare plants?
- They make money from eco-tourism which is very popular in the world today
- People like to celebrate local biodiversity
- The Galapagos islands are visited often for their rare birds and other species
Describe what the Rivet Hypothesis is which was proposed proposed by P. Ehrlich
Species are like the rivets on an airplane, with each species playing a small but critical role in keeping the plane (the ecosystem) airborne. The loss of a rivet weakens the plane and causes it to lose a little airworthiness. The loss of more rivets would prove critical to the airplane’s function.
What is the importance of St. Johnswort Hypericum?
- Was very invasive in California
- Beatles ate this plant and laid eggs on them to keep them from growing
- In California, there are very few St. John’s Wort’s left and are now considered rare
- The Crysolina beetle is now endangered because there are few St. Johnsworts left and they are essential to the ecosystems of California
What is the umbrella species and why are they important? In addition, give an example of an umbrella species.
1. Umbrella species are species selected for making conservation-related decisions, typically because protecting these species indirectly protects the many other species that make up the ecological community
2. Example: The spotted owl is a rare bird species that was threatened in an old forest
- Loggers wanted to cut the forest down, but it was saved under federal law
What happened when wolves were introduced in Yellowstone National Park?
- Most wolves are killed in North America for their fur
- Wolves were introduced into Yellowstone national park in order to save them
- The elks at yellowstone were then attacked and they moved to higher elevations
- The vegetation at the lower elevations were then changed since the elks moved
What is a community?
Populations (plants and animals) that coexist together in time and space and interact directly and indirectly
What is species richness?
What were the differences of species richness between the salt marsh and HMF?
Species richness is simply the number of species present in a local population
Describe what verticle structure measures
Biomass compared to the height of the trees or other plants in the area
What is an ecotone?
An abrupt change is species identity. A transition area between two biomes. It is where two communities meet and integrate.
What is island biogeography and what does it explain?
- The theory that explains how habitat size and distance explains species richness of actual islands
- Used in reference to any ecosystem that is isolated due to being surrounded by unlike ecosystems to explain its biodiversity
Explain what happened in the experiment involving mangroves on the islands between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atalntic Ocean.
- The mangroves were located all around the coast on the islands
- Scientists wanted to know how many insects that are attracted by mangroves on these islands
- In high tide, the mangroves were under water and in low tide they were in poor soil
- They pumped in poison to kill the insects to see how many insects are on the islands
- The ones closest to the mainland had the most species which was island E2 with 42 species
Explain how ecological sucession works
- The observed process of change in the species structure of an ecological community over time.
- The community begins with relatively few pioneering plants and animals and develops through increasing complexity until it becomes stable or self-perpetuating as a climax community.
Name and briefly exlain the 3 types of filters for communities
- Regional processes Filter- (Species pool, Dispersal barriers, Colonization order, geography and climate)
- Environmental Filter- (Abiotic conditions, Disturbance Habitat, stability, and heterogeneity)
- Biotic interactions Filter- (Competition, Trophic interactions, mutualism)
Explain what happened at the Mt. Hood of Oregon.
a. ) Erupted in 1805
b. ) Some of the original forests persisted although there was a lot of ash still around
c. ) Islands of forests slowly started to spread around the volcano
What are the differences between early and late sucession?
What was the destruction of the Cape Cod Dunes in Massachusettes?
Movement of land by the result of ocean tides. New land on the tip but disturbed land on the bottom.
What was the destruction of Baffin Island, Canada?
Once covered by a glacier 10,000 years ago and smoothed out hills all the way to New Jersey where it eventually melted.
What was the destruction of the Tundra Vegetation?
Has a short growing season, bad for pollinators, a disturbance by ice created this community.
What was the destruction of the Pinelands, New Jersey?
Disturbed by fires that has poor soil for agriculture. The trees, mostly pitch pines, aren’t dead because they have special life history traits that are not killed by fires.
What did people find after a fire on Mt. Laurel?
Regeneration after fire with sprouts coming out after a fire. This is common on Dukes Farms.
If you eliminate fires, you eliminate the grasses that make up prairies.
Describe the disturbance pattern of scales
Means how much of the land was disturbed and causes change in the community. Asteroids are the worst disturbance.
What causes habitat modification?
Human actions, bringing in invasives, mowing and destruction of development of buildings, elimination of fires, adding pollution
