Download Some Questions to Ponder

Some Questions to Ponder
In the northern hemisphere, show, using maps, how ocean and atmospheric movements influence
temperature and precipitation along the west continental coasts
What limits primary productivity in open oceanic waters? How are these limiting factors
mediated by the physical properties of the habitat?
Graph the spectrum of solar radiation outside the atmosphere and at Earth’s surface. Describe
how different regions of the spectrum influence biological processes.
Aside from top-down bottom-up considerations, how might competition structure communities
(where structure = dispersion, density, species composition, diversity energy and material fluxes
and stability)? Support your answer with lovely, real and detailed examples from the real world
Describe ways that dryfall does and does not follow atmospheric cycles and provide examples of
the importance of three different sorts of dryfall.
List as many basically different ways this food chain could be lengthened
Plant=> herbivore=> carnivore
What is the difference between a stable population and a stationary population? What would R0
be for each? What about r? (Don’t forget units!)
If nitrogen makes up 80% of the atmosphere why is it so often limiting? Describe the biological
processes that make nitrogen available to ecosystems.
Discuss the differences between ecological efficiency and population efficiency
How does the first law of thermodynamics pertain to energy and materials flux in ecological
systems
Aside from top-down bottom-up considerations, how might predation structure communities
(where structure = dispersion, density, species composition, diversity energy and material fluxes
and stability)? Support your answer with lovely, real and detailed examples from the real world.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of cohort vs. static life tables?
Some people estimate the world’s population will double in as short a time as 25 years. If that
were true what would r be?
Discuss the evolution of species that are characteristic of different stages of succession. Include
in your discussion morphological, physiological and life history factors.
Contrast limits to primary and secondary production in tropical vs. temperate regions.
Are you studying by your self? Stop it!
‘Diversity increases toward the tropics” Evaluate this statement and support your answer with
examples
Aside from top-down bottom-up considerations, how might disease structure communities
(where structure = dispersion, density, species composition, diversity energy and material fluxes
and stability)? Support your answer with lovely, real and detailed examples from the real world.
What is ‘net reproductive rate’? How is it calculated? How is it used?
Diagram the carbon cycle. Indicate the relative amounts in each pool and the fluxes. What are the
major biological, physical and chemical processes influencing this cycle?
What can we learn from a pyramid of numbers? What must we watch out for?
How do assimilation and ingestion differ? How is this difference important to the structure of
communities?
Compare and contrast the global cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus. How do the chemical
properties of these two elements influence life on Earth?
Do the same for these elements in the context of ecosystem scale cycles.
What causes succession to proceed? List the possible factors and illustrate lavishly with real
examples.
A population of flies has r = 0.250 mo.-1. Assume the population started with 100 individuals.
After 10 months have elapsed how big is the population? Now assume another population with
NON overlapping generations (1 generation = 1 month) starts and ends with the same number of
individuals AS DID THE PREVIOIS POPULATION over the same time period - what would R0
be for this second population?
What is the relationship between the concept of competitive exclusion and keystone species/
Show how these might be related and how you would test your idea.
For each of these solar parameters graph their latitudinal distribution
a) total annual hours of sunlight
b) total annual incident energy
c) incident energy in late December
d) day length in late June
e) day length in late march
each graph should run from 90oS to 90o N
Discuss the value of conservative tracers in ecosystem ecology.
Outline the different states Nitrogen can take in ecosystems and discuss the organisms
responsible for the transfers between states
Differentiate between resistance and resilience
Operationally, how would you differentiate between density dependent and density independent
processes?
Operationally define limiting factors.
Which life history parameter can change net reproductive rate with the smallest percent change?
How can heavy metals influence ecosystem dynamics?
Define biodiversity. What does its measurement entail?
Discuss gradient analysis with respect to questions about community structure.
What does the slope in the species-area curve tell you?
Why has much of our thinking about community structure come from the rocky intertidal?
Are food webs all wet?
Discuss how data on population age structures might provide information on succession.
Provide one real example of how mutualism structures a terrestrial community.
Provide specific cases for and against the Mother Westwind School of ecology
Construct a model, similar in form to the Lotka-Volterra competition and predation models that
describe the effects of mutualism between two species.
Why do laboratory experiments studying predation often fail to mimic reality?
What is a stable limit cycle? Give a real example from nature.
San Diego California and Savannah Georgia are both at 34oN latitude. Why is the climate in San
Diego dry, and that in Savannah humid?
What are the units of the solar constant? What is its value?
In the Lotka-Volterra predation equations, what are the units of c and what does it represent?
What is virulence? How does it impact population biology?
For the following mx table (age-specific mortality) construct the lx table. Supply a bx (age
specific fecundity) table that would give a stationary age distribution
x
0
1
2
3
4
5
mx
0.05
0.2
0.5
0.5
0.1
1.0
What is the difference between a functional food web and an energy flow food web?
For the following qx (age specific mortality. table construct an mx (age specific fecundity table
that would give a stationary population
x
qx
0
0.05
1
0.2
2
0.5
3
0.5
4
0.1
5
1.0
Are you studying with friends? GOOD FOR YOU!
In a population of mice, 50% of the females survive to the first breeding season when they are
one year old. In each year they give rise to an average of 6 offspring with a 1:1 sex ratio.
Between each breeding event and the next, 50% die. This continues to the end of their third
breeding season at which time all die of old age. What is the net reproductive rate of this
population?
“Predation is more important in determining community structure than competition” Evaluate
this statement. Support you answer with real examples.
Why are large, invertebrate planktonic herbivores rarely found with small planktonic invertebrate
herbivores in lakes?
Do herbivores generally over eat their food supply in nature? Support your answer with real
examples
How do gaps in communities arise and what is their fate?
A population of grasshoppers reproduces annually (once a year in early summer). The following
is a life table for this population. What will the population be after three years if the founder
population consisted of 400 individuals?
x (in months)
0
1
3
5
7
lx
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.3
bx
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
9
11
13
0.1
0.1
0
20.0
20.0
20.0
Using the Lotka-Volterra notation for competition graph the situation when one species would
always out compete the other regardless of the starting population sizes (excluding N=0)
What is upwelling and how does it come about? What are the ecological consequences?
What would you expect primary producers to be like in communities with long food chains?
Why? Support your answer lavishly with real examples.
In what ecological circumstances would you expect expectation of future life to increase with
age? Use real examples.
What is an ecological engineer?
The following graph shows test tube breakage in my lab. Draw the survivorship and mortality
curves for this population and construct the lx column of the life table for the test tubes.
100
90
Number remaining
80
Test tube breakage
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1
3
5
7
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35
Months
Under what conditions would the value for the mean expectation of further life increase with
age? In what sort of organism might you expect this to happen?
What is a keystone species? Give an example from those discussed this semester.
Defend the individualistic theory of community organization. What evidence discussed this
semester supports this theory? What evidence discussed this semester does not? Evaluate these
data
Compare and contrast Connell’s work on competition with MacArthurs’
Various mathematical descriptions of the growth of animals have been used by biologists. Two
of these are the logistic and the vonBertalanffy. Discuss the biological assumptions underlying
each of these two descriptions, and discuss their generality and reality.