Lecture 1 Chapters 1,2, and 22

Question 1

What is Ecology?

Answer 1

The relationship between organisms and their environment and among individual organisms and species of organisms.

Question 2

What is Variability

Answer 2

He showed graph of percent of ice coverage in the Atlantic ocean. Y axis is amount of ice coverage, on X axis is years. Grey stuff in background is a mess but they are individual data points taken from different parts of the Atlantic ocean. His point is there is nothing wrong with the data, that is just the way data in ecology is, has very high variability. reason for that is because the ice level is probably influence by a lot of things, temperature, cloud cover, precipitation. The data arent sloppy they are variable and easily interpretable with appropriate use of statistical analysis as shown by the solid red, green, blue and black lines, which show different ways of taking averages. Black line shows average, and clear pattern shown that there is a decline. Red line shows downward trend as well. green n blue is linear trend. wants to show us ecological data is very variable, and messy, not because of incompetant scientists or instruments, this is the real data and they are very sophisticated and accurate.

Question 3

What’s biodiversity?

Answer 3

Number of species basically. a lot of biodiversity near equator in the tropics, in warm areas. Endemism: species only conc in one area.

Question 4

Value of biodiversity arises from…

Answer 4

Social, economic, and ecological considerations

Question 5

Provisioning Services

Answer 5

any type of benefit to people that can be extracted from nature. Along with food, other types of provisioning services include drinking water, timber, wood fuel, natural gas, oils, plants that can be made into clothes and other materials, and medicinal benefits.

Question 6

Economic Services example

Answer 6

Tourism to see biodiversity

Question 7

Whats the rate of extinction and what kind of process is it

Answer 7

Extinction is going at a much much faster rate, rate is unprecedented. Extinction is a natural process and has to do with habitat destruction.

Question 8

Describe a mass extinction event

Answer 8

AN event in which at least 75% of existing species go extinct

Question 9

One of the most famous extinctions happened when..

Answer 9

An asteroid hit somewhere near mexican peninsula, and caused extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. 40000 miles per hour, size of Manhattan asteroid.

Question 10

several mass extinctions

Answer 10

one cuz of volcanos, one cuz of asteroids and theres more due to our destructive abilities

Question 11

what is threatened mean

Answer 11

Not extinct, but pretty close to it. Amphibians have a lot of threatened species because they are particalury suseptible to pollution (ex road salt). birds have lowest extinction rates

Question 12

Why should we care about species diversity

Answer 12

species richness has an effect on ecosystem function, (biomass is ecosystem function). High species richness, the more biomass.

Question 13

Genetic Diversity of animals / plants

Answer 13

they breed the most sellable animals for economic reasons, so there is less diversity of animals. There is also less diversity in plants cuz farmers wanna grow what sells the most (ex corn)

Question 13

Genetic Diversity of animals / plants

Answer 13

they breed the most sellable animals for economic reasons, so there is less diversity of animals. There is also less diversity in plants cuz farmers wanna grow what sells the most (ex corn)

Question 13

Genetic Diversity of animals / plants

Answer 13

they breed the most sellable animals for economic reasons, so there is less diversity of animals. There is also less diversity in plants cuz farmers wanna grow what sells the most (ex corn they want bigger knobs)

Question 14

what are they doing right now to preserve plant diversity

Answer 14

global seed vault in svalbard. they collect all these seeds in foil packets and store them in a control room, so if any species were to go extinct we will still have its seed

Question 15

Are human activities beneficial to biodiversity

Answer 15

No a lot of human activity reduces biodiversity, we participate in deforestation and other destructive activities

Question 16

Whats going on with forest cover in North America

Answer 16

In north America, we have some tree loss as well as tree gain

Question 17

Amazon rain forest and south africa tree cover

Answer 17

lots of loss of biodiversity due to cutting down forest to make space for agriculture.

Question 18

Whats going on with fisheries

Answer 18

they have been over fished. collapsed fishery: when a fishery no longer has a population that can be fished

Question 19

Cod disappeared because of

Answer 19

Over fishing, companies took a lot of cod and canned it, so not a lot of cod left. they are not extinct, but the decline is present

Question 20

Are introduced species increasing or decreasing

Answer 20

they increased, we see more population of certain species on staten island. they are unintentional introductions, they some how get caught on a ship and brought here

Question 21

What is biotic homogenization

Answer 21

imagine all countries sharing their species with each other. ex, american bird goes to asia, asian cow goes to africa etc. Bio homogenization will occur and its the process in which unique species compositions originally found in different regions slowly become more similar due to movement of people, cargo and species

Question 22

What is biomagnification?

Answer 22

The process in which the concentration of a contaminant increases as it moves up the food chain. example, dolphins eating fish that contain mercury thus increasing overall mercury content in dolphin meat. DDT is another example, DDT in water, absorbed by plankton fish eat, other fish eat, then birds it. DDT is toxic to not only mosquitos, but its toxic to other organisms. DDT binds to fats and accumulates in their fatty tissues, then another species eats it leading to biomagnification.DDT in high conc is a neurotoxin

Question 23

global warming over time (decrease or increase)

Answer 23

It increased. when u look at graph its like u see up and downs, but the overall trend is an increase over time. Ice and glacier mass is decreasing. sea levels are increasing

Question 24

What is going on with glaciers

Answer 24

Ice and glacier mass is decreasing. sea levels are increasing (leading to floods)

Question 25

What is the prediction of changes to the global temperature

Answer 25

its going to increase over time

Question 26

what is minimum viable population (MVP)

Answer 26

The minimum viable population size is an estimate of the number of individuals required for a high probability of survival of a population over a given period of time. the smallest population size of species that can persist in the face of environmental variation

Question 27

What is a way to slow decline of biodiversity

Answer 27

put together sources of state and fed government to make a patch of protected lands. it is expensive to buy out a lot

Question 28

What did they do to protect the condors

Answer 28

They did something called captive breeding. This is when they breed endangered species in zoos and other facilities to build a healthy population of the animals. Species-survival plans coordinate with zoos around the world to bring species together for breeding that ensures genetic diversity. condor population went up and released them into the wild.

Question 29

Wolves serve as a keystone species, what does that mean?

Answer 29

a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically. Basically when they introduced wolves, the wolves ate the elk and deer which ate all the grass and stuff. so species of plants increased when wolves came in

Question 30

What is a crisis ecoregion

Answer 30

A crisis ecoregion is a terrestrial biome facing significant threat to its biodiversity and requiring well directed conservation efforts in order to curb the irreversible loss of plant and animal species and their surrounding habitats. Places with critical ecoregion are usually places with endemic species

Question 31

Describe changes in bird abundance, categories are generalist, grassland, scrub. wetland, urban and woodland.

Answer 31

Grassland bird abundance declined, and everywhere else bird abundance increased. Why ? grasslands are usually destructed by humans

Question 32

Are we measuring the birds aspect in the grasslands?

Answer 32

No they are measuring other aspects, birds fly away soon no point in tracking birds

Question 33

whats bird populations look like

Answer 33

some are decreasing, but the ones with protection efforts their populations are increasing.