Module 19/20 - Introduction to Ecology

Overharvesting (O):

harvesting a renewable resource quicker than the source can renew itself; often leads to the destruction of the resource.

Proximate questions:

have to do with how an individual's genes, development, and immediate external stimuli and internal physiological states cause a behavior to occur at a specific time and place/what are the immediate triggers of a behavior?

Psychological and Moral Value:

humans benefit psychologically from living in a biodiverse world, human evolutionary history has adapted us to live in a natural environment and that built environments generate stressors that affect.

Wild Food Sources:

humans obtain food resources from wild populations. For approximately 1 billion people, aquatic resources provide the main source of animal protein. In addition to humans losing the food source, these alterations affect many other species in ways that are difficult or impossible to predict.

Inclusive fitness:

involves a direct component (the survival and reproduction.of an individual and its descendants) and an indirect component (the survival and reproduction of an individual's nondescendant kin)/an individual's genes are passed to future generations not only through its own offspring but also via other relatives.

Innate behavior:

involves a genetically "hard-wired" response that is performed the first time an organism is exposed to a stimulus.

Intrasexual selection:

involves competition among members of the same sex for mates. Aggressive mating rituals such as rams butting heads or fighting between male elephant seals are examples.

Sexual selection:

is a "special" type of selection for traits that increase the probability of acquiring a mate. There are two types of sexual selection, intersexual and intrasexual.

Habituation:

is a simple form of learning in which an animal stops responding to a stimulus after a period of repeated exposure.

Imprinting:

is a type of learning that occurs at a particular age or a life stage that is rapid and independent of the species involved.

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA):

is an agreement between the United States and Canada that was signed into law in 1918 in response to declines in North American bird species caused by hunting.

Preserving biodiversity:

is an extraordinary challenge that must be met by greater understanding of biodiversity itself, changes in human behavior and beliefs, and various preservation strategies.

Learned behavior:

is shaped by experience and may change throughout an organism's lifetime. We will consider examples of each.

The Ordovician-Silurian extinction event:

is the first recorded mass extinction and the second largest. During this period, about 85 percent of marine species (few species lived outside the oceans) became extinct. The main hypothesis for its cause is a period of glaciation and then warming

Orthokinesis:

is the increased or decreased speed of movement of an organism in response to a stimulus, but not in a specific direction.

Migration:

is the long-range seasonal movement of animals.

Invasive species are especially threatening to what kind of ecosystem?

islands.

Females lions live in prides consisting of a male, several females who are usually sisters, and their cubs. A female lion will often nurse a cub that is not her own if its mother is away hunting. This is an example of:

kin selection.

The late Devonian extinction:

may have occurred over a relatively long period of time. It appears to have affected marine species and not the plants or animals inhabiting terrestrial habitats. The causes of this extinction are poorly understood.

Three general mating systems occur in animal populations:

monogamous, polygynous, and polyandrous.

Intersexual selection:

occurs when individuals of one sex choose mates of the other sex based on a variety of visual, audio, tactile, or chemical cues. This has led to an enormous variety of traits, such as the peacock's colorful tail. This type of selection often leads to traits that may actually be detrimental in terms of survival.

polyandrous mating:

one female mates with many males. These types of systems are much rarer than monogamous and polygynous mating systems.

monogamous mating:

one male and one female are paired for at least one breeding season.

DNA barcoding:

one molecular genetic method, which takes advantage of rapid evolution in a mitochondrial gene present in eukaryotes, excepting the plants, to identify species using the sequence of portions of the gene.

Which two extinction risks may be a direct result of the pet trade?

over harvesting and exotic species introduction.

Five mass extinctions:

periods of large-scale extinction. The fossil record of the mass extinctions was the basis for defining periods of geological history, so they typically occur at the transition point between geological periods.

What is an ecosystem service that performs the same function as a pesticide?

predators of pests

Habitat restoration:

process of bringing a damaged habitat back to a healthy condition/holds considerable promise as a mechanism for restoring and maintaining biodiversity.

Behavior:

refers to a change in activity of an organism in response to a stimulus.

Polygynous mating:

refers to one male mating with multiple females. In these situations, the female usually provides most of the parental care.

Invasive Species (I):

species that enter new ecosystems and multiply, harming native species and their habitats/Exotic species are species that have been intentionally or unintentionally introduced by humans into an ecosystem in which they did not evolve.

A robin that feeds its chick increases the probability:

that its chick will survive (ultimate cause)

The 6th Mass Extinction or The Pleistocene Extinction is one of the lesser extinctions, and a recent one:

the North American, and to some degree Eurasian, megafauna, or large animals, disappeared toward the end of the last glaciation period. The extinction appears to have happened in a relatively restricted time period of 10,000-12,000 years ago. In North America, the losses were quite dramatic and included the woolly mammoths (last dated about 4,000 years ago in an isolated population), mastodon, giant beavers, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats, and the North American camel. Possibly due to over-hunting.

operant conditioning:

the conditioned behavior is gradually modified by its consequences as the animal responds to the stimulus.

taxis:

the directed movement toward or away from a stimulus. This movement can be in response to light (phototaxis), chemical signals (chemotaxis), or gravity (geotaxis).

The end-Permian extinction:

the largest extinction in the history of life, 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all terrestrial species were lost, leading suspect is extended and widespread volcanic activity that led to a runaway global-warming event.

cognition:

the manipulation of information using the mind.

species richness:

the number and kinds of species in a location or on the planet.

ecosystem diversity:

the number of different ecosystems on the planet or in a given geographic area/variety of ecosystems.

Genetic diversity or variation:

the raw material for adaptation in a species/variety of genes in a species or other taxonomic group or ecosystem, the term can refer to allelic diversity or genome-wide diversity.

Kinesis:

the undirected movement in response to a stimulus, is another type of innate behavior.

biodiversity:

the variety of life present in the biosphere, by taking into account both the number of species and their commonness/variety of a biological system, typically conceived as the number of species, but also applying to genes, biochemistry, and ecosystems.

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES):

treaty came into force in 1975. The treaty, and the national legislation that supports it, provides a legal framework for preventing approximately 33,000 listed species from being transported across nations' borders, thus protecting them from being caught or killed when international trade is involved.

a. an involuntary and rapid response to a stimulus b. behavior that can change throughout an organism's lifetime c. an earthworm moves downward under the soil d. undirected movement in response to a stimulus e. an ant reverses direction when it detects the odor of vinegar

1. kinesis (d) 2. negative chemotaxis (e) 3. learning (b) 4. positive geotaxis (c) 5. reflex (a)

The number of currently described species on the planet is about:

1.5 million.

When did the Pleistocene extinction occur?

10-12 thousand years ago.

About what percentage of land on the planet is set aside as a preserve of some type?

11.5 percent

phototropism:

A plant's growth-related response to light (taxis).

keystone species:

A species that influences the survival of many other species in an ecosystem. Removing a keystone species from an ecological community may cause a collapse in diversity.

Scientists measured the relative abundance of fern spores above and below the K-Pg boundary in this rock sample. Which of the following statements most likely represents their findings?

An abundance of fern spores from several species was found below the K-Pg boundary, but none was found above.

altruism:

Behavior that lowers the fitness of the individual but increases the fitness of another individual.

Human Health:

Biologists recognize the human species is embedded in ecosystems and is dependent on them, just as every other species on the planet is dependent. Technology smooths out the extremes of existence, but ultimately the human species cannot exist without its ecosystem.

Certain parrot species cannot be brought to the United States to be sold as pets. What is the name of the legislation that makes this illegal?

CITES

Habitat Loss (H):

Elimination of their ecosystem—whether it is a forest, a desert, a grassland, a freshwater estuarine, or a marine environment—will kill the individuals in the species. Remove the entire habitat within the range of a species and, unless they are one of the few species that do well in human-built environments, the species will become extinct/can affect ecosystems other than forests.

Intrasexual selection occurs when individuals of one sex choose mates of the other sex based on a variety of visual, audio, tactile, or chemical cues.

False.

Converting a prairie to a farm field is an example of ________

Habitat loss.

preserve designs for maintaining biodiversity:

In addition to the physical, biological, and ecological specifications of a preserve, there are a variety of policy, legislative, and enforcement specifications related to uses of the preserve for functions other than protection of species.

The Role of Captive Breeding in preservation:

In general, it has been recognized that, except in some specific targeted cases, captive breeding programs for endangered species are inefficient and often prone to failure when the species are reintroduced to the wild

the end-Cretaceous extinction event:

It was during this extinction event about 65 million years ago that the dinosaurs, the dominant vertebrate group for millions of years, disappeared from the planet (with the exception of a theropod clade that gave rise to birds). Every land animal that weighed more than 25 kg became extinct. The cause of this extinction is now understood to be the result of a cataclysmic impact of a large meteorite, or asteroid, off the coast of what is now the Yucatán Peninsula.

What was the name of the first international agreement on climate change?

Kyoto Protocol

Agricultural Diversity:

Loss of diversity in pest enemies will inevitably make it more difficult and costly to grow food. humans compete for their food with crop pests, most of which are insects. Pesticides control these competitors; however, pesticides are costly and lose their effectiveness over time as pest populations adapt. They also lead to collateral damage by killing non-pest species and risking the health of consumers and agricultural workers.

Estimates of Present-Time Extinction Rates:

One contemporary extinction rate estimate uses the extinctions in the written record since the year 1500 (the estimated extinction rate closer to 100 E/MSY. The predicted rate by the end of the century is 1500 E/MSY). A second approach to estimating present-time extinction rates is to correlate species loss with habitat loss by measuring forest-area loss and understanding species-area relationships.

Limitations on Preserves:

Political and economic pressures, human demographic pressures illegal poaching, climate change, migration, etc.

Endangered Species Act (ESA):

Protects species that are considered to be threatened or endangered. Includes migratory birds and their habitats. Species at risk are listed by the Act; the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is required by law to develop management plans that protect the listed species and bring them back to sustainable numbers.

captive breeding programs:

Raising and breeding organisms in controlled conditions, such as zoos or aquariums.

How Much Area to Preserve?

The conclusion must be that either the percentage of area protected must increase, or the percentage of high quality preserves must increase, or preserves must be targeted with greater attention to biodiversity protection.

kin selection:

The idea that altruistic behavior might be selected because it increases the likelihood of genes being passed through siblings, nieces, nephews, or other relatives.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) keeps a list of extinct and endangered species called the Red List:

The list is not complete, but it describes 380 extinct species of vertebrates after 1500 AD, 86 of which were driven extinct by overhunting or overfishing.

Illegal wildlife trade is monitored by another non-profit:

Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (TRAFFIC).

Behavior refers to a change in activity of an organism in response to a stimulus.

True

Biodiversity is a general term for the variety of life present in the biosphere.

True

Overharvesting is a serious threat to many species, but particularly to aquatic species.

True.

Which of the following statements is not supported by this graph?

Within each group, there are more critically endangered species than vulnerable species.

A secondary plant compound might be used for which of the following?

a new drug.

classical conditioning:

a response called the conditioned response is associated with a stimulus that it had previously not been associated with, the conditioned stimulus.

Fixed action pattern:

a series of movements elicited by a stimulus such that even when the stimulus is removed, the pattern goes on to completion.

A recent estimate suggests that the eukaryote species for which science has names, about 1.5 million species:

account for less than 20 percent of the total number of eukaryote species present on the planet (8.7 million species, by one estimate).

Pollution (P):

air pollution is a main driver of climate change, humans have had particularly broad scale impacts on aquatic ecosystems via pollution including acid rain, increasing ocean acidification due to the ocean storing more carbon, and nutrient pollution (Nitrogen and Phospohorous) via agricultural runoff.

preserve:

an area of land set aside with varying degrees of protection for the organisms that exist within the boundaries of the preserve. Preserves can be effective in the short term for protecting both species and ecosystems, but they face challenges that scientists are still exploring to strengthen their viability as long-term solutions.

Pollination is an example of ________.

an ecosystem service

The Kyoto Protocol:

an international agreement that came out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that committed countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, was ratified by some countries, but spurned by others (US/China).

reflex action:

an involuntary and rapid response to stimulus.

Climate change (C):

and specifically the anthropogenic (meaning, caused by humans) warming trend presently underway, is recognized as a major extinction threat, particularly when combined with other threats such as habitat loss.

Courtship displays:

are a series of ritualized visual behaviors (signals) that attract mates and coordinate mating activity.

Ultimate questions:

are concerned with why a behavior evolved. In what way is it adaptive? Has it been inherited from ancestral species?

Biodiversity hotspots:

are geographical areas that contain high numbers of endemic species.

Conditioned behaviors:

are types of associative learning, where a stimulus becomes associated with a consequence.

all levels of biodiversity are greatest in the tropics:

biodiversity increases closer to the equator.

An American Robin parents responds to its chick begging call:

by feeding the chick (proximate cause)

Communication:

consists of the transfer of information from one indivdual to another using signals.

A stimulus becomes associated with a consequence:

example of conditioning.

A crow in a field ignores a scarecrow after a few days:

example of habituation.

A young salmon learns to recognize its native stream by smell:

example of imprinting.

the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event:

extinction event occurred just before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea, hypotheses of climate change, asteroid impact, and volcanic eruptions have been argued.

Endemic species:

found in only one location. Endemics with highly restricted distributions are particularly vulnerable to extinction.

HICOP;

habitat loss (H), Invasive species (I), climate change (C), overharvesting (O), and pollution (P).