Unit 2 Flashcards
What is the relationship between primary productivity and biodiversity?
If primary productivity is high, biodiversity is also high.
What are the 3 different levels of biodiversity? How are each of these levels affected by environmental stressors?
Genetic Diversity, Species Diversity, and Habitat Diversity
- The more genetically diverse a population is, the better it can respond to environmental stressors
- Loss of habitat leads to a loss of specialist species, followed by a loss of generalist species
- Ecosystems with a large number of species are more likely to recover from disruptions
How do you quantify biodiversity?
Species Richness - The number of species in a given habitat
Species Evenness - The relative abundance of species in a given habitat
What is a population bottleneck?
A population bottleneck is an event that drastically reduces the size of a population. This can cause inbreeding, susceptibility to diseases, and birth defects. The more important takeaway, however, is that population bottlenecks result in decreased genetic variation within a species.
How does the loss of habitat affect biodiversity?
Habitat loss more greatly affects specialist species than generalist species, which is why we find that so many of these species are endangered. Specialist species tend to rely on a singular food resource for survival, so without that resource, their population tends to decline.
What is natural selection, and how does it affect biodiversity?
Natural selection is the mechanism that drives evolution. It’s the idea that the organisms best adapted to their environment survive and reproduce, while less suited species are discontinued. This impacts biodiversity in the sense that external stressors might cause natural selection to decrease the diversity of organisms in a given environment (ex. Climate change and sea level rise will benefit organisms that thrive underwater, and harm those that thrive in low tide areas. Natural selection will cause these low tide organisms to die out, thus decreasing the species variation in that habitat.).
What are some factors that might increase genetic biodiversity?
- Low variation in environmental stress
- Evolution, Mutation, Speciation
- Minor disturbances like surface fires, wind storms, and floods
- High habitat diversity
What are some factors that might decrease genetic biodiversity?
- Continuous environmental stress
- Extinction
- Extreme disturbances, crown fires, clear cutting, and hurricanes
- Geographic isolation
- Invasive species
What does anthropogenic mean?
Human influenced / Influenced by humans
What are the 12 ecosystem services?
- Water, Land, Soil, Air
- Policy, Climate, Pollution, Land-use
- Strong Economy, Well-being, Food, Water, and Resources, Public Health
What are the benefits of biodiversity?
Provisional Services, Regulating Services, Cultural Services, Supporting Services
What are provisional services?
Provisional services are any type of benefit to people that can be extracted from nature (food, raw materials, freshwater, and medicinal purposes).
What are regulating services?
Regulating services are processes that work to make ecosystems clean, sustainable, functional, and resilient to change (local climate and air quality, carbon sequestration and storage, moderation of extreme events, waste-water treatment, erosion prevention and soil fertility, pollination, biological control, water flow).
What are cultural services?
Cultural services are non-material benefits that contribute to the development and cultural advancement of people (recreation and mental and physical health, ecotourism, aesthetic appreciation and inspiration for culture, art, and design, spiritual experience and sense of place).
What are supporting services?
Supporting services are ecosystems themselves that couldn’t be sustained without the consistency of underlying natural processes (habitats for species and maintenance of genetic diversity).
