Monitoring populations Flashcards
What can give information about environment qualities?
Presence, absence or abundance of indicator species can give information such as presence or pollutant.
What type of species can be used to monitor an ecosystem?
Susceptible or favoured species.
What indicates a susceptible species?
Absence or reduced population indicates a species is susceptible to some factor in the environment.
What indicates a favoured species?
Abundance or increased population indicates it is favoured by the conditions.
What technique can be used to estimate population size?
Mark and recapture technique.
What is the feature of the mark and recapture technique?
A sample of the population is captured and marked (M)
After a period of time a second sample is recaptured (C)
(R) some of the first sample captured in the second sample
N= MxC/R
What are the drawbacks of mark and recapture?
Assumes all individuals have an equal chance of capture, that there is no immigration or emigration and that individuals are marked and released can fully mix with the population again.
What are the methods if marking?
Banding, Tagging, Surgical implantation, painting and hair clipping. All methods of marking must not effect the study species.
Measurements used to quantify animal behaviour?
Latency, Frequency and Duration
What is Latency?
Latency is the time between the stimulus occurring and the response behaviour.
What is frequency?
Frequency is the number of times a behaviour occurs within the observation period.
What is duration?
Duration is the length of time each behaviour occurs during the observation period.
What is an ethogram and what does it do?
An ethogram lists specific species behaviours to be observed and recorded. It allows the proportion of time spent on each behaviour to be calculated by recording duration and total time of observation.
Allows the construction of a time budget
Anthropomorphism
The importance to treat information in a scientific manner and not attribute human characteristics as can lead to invalid conclusions.
