Predation

Question 1

All predators target juveniles and post-reproductive adults, why and what is the exception to this?

Answer 1

Lower risk and lowest cost of injury.
Exception: humans catching larger fish

Question 2

Parasitoids

Answer 2

Parasitic wasps, an important natural source of biological control

Question 3

Carl zimmer, 2006

Answer 3

Adult wasps find cockroach’s and deliver two stings, one to the midsection and one to the brain. The cockroach then gets led to the wasp’s burrow where it is forced to become food for the wasps offspring when they hatch inside of it

Question 4

What is Liebig’s law of the minimum? Give an example

Answer 4

A population can be regulated by a single resource that has the greatest scarcity; desert animals and an oasis of water

Question 5

When do predators limit prey density? (Keep populations of prey from growing unchecked). And when do they not?

Answer 5

Predators limit prey density when the carrying capacity has exceeded and when native prey have no defended against non-native predators.
Predators do not when liebigs law is in act (when the growth is limited to a single scarce resource)

Question 6

The average ratio of predator to prey in common parks

Answer 6

1:250
(Biomass is 1:300)

Question 7

Defenses that prey use against predators

Answer 7

-Camouflage or crypsis (pretending to be a twig or stone)
-Conspicuous (being brightly coloured as a warning signal and poisonous)

Question 8

What is Batesian mimicry?

Answer 8

A survival trick that deceives predators into thinking that a harmless species is a more dangerous one

Question 9

Mullerian mimicry

Answer 9

A form of biological resemblance where two or more organisms exhibit warning systems such as the same pattern of bright colours
(Ex monarch butterfly)