Conservation Bio Exam 1

True or False: Conservation Bio is an exact science.

False

Who were the people who represented the transcendentalist/romantic preservationist ethic?

John Muir (National Parks), Emerson, Thoreau (Walden)

Which side of the spectrum were the transcendentalists on, the sustainable use ethic or the preservationist ethic?

Preservationist ethic

Why did the transcendentalists believe nature was important?

For spiritual value

What conservation ethic does Gifford Pinchot (chief of the US Forest Service) represent?

Resource Conservation ethic

Which side of the spectrum is the resource conservation ethic on, the sustainable use ethic or the preservationist ethic?

sustainable use ethic

Why did Pinchot believe nature was important?

To serve the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time

What did Aldo Leopold believe?

There should be unity between man and nature. Man is just part of a complex ecology.

What are the three ideas for preserving nature?

Sustainable use ethic

Preservation ethic

Harmony ethic

What type of system does the preservation ethic strive for?

pristine systems, focus on biodiversity

What type of system does the sustainable use ethic strive for?

human-dominated systems, focus on ecosystem services

What are the four ecosystem services?

provisioning, regulating, cultural, supporting

What are provisioning ecosystem services? Give examples.

Ecosystems provide things we can HARVEST

• Food, timber, drinking water, medicines, etc

What are regulating ecosystem services? Give examples.

Ecosystems control natural processes that we benefit from.

• air and water purification, soil fertility, pollination, etc.

What are cultural ecosystem services? Give examples.

Ecosystems provide nonmaterial benefits.

• Recreation, religious, spiritual, aesthetic, educational, etc.

• Ex: birdwatching

Why is the ecosystem service framework useful and why is it controversial?

Useful: distill conservation goals

Controversial: encourages thinking about tradeoffs between services, hard to quantify things that don't have a value

Pleistocene overkill hypothesis

Idea that hunting by prehistoric humans caused the extinction of large bodied animals across continents

IPAT equation

Environmental Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology

• Helps us think about our impacts and where they come from

Human population growth is ________________

exponential.

What do we mean when we say there is taxonomic diversity?

There are many different SPECIES

What are the three ways of defining a species (species concepts)?

-Morphological: groups organisms into a species based on physical similarities

-Biological: groups organisms into a species if they reproduce and create viable offspring in the wild

-Evolutionary/Phylogenetic: groups organisms into a species based on their distinct evolutionary lineage and average genetic relatedness

Species Richness

Measure of how many different species are in a community

Downsides of measuring species richness:

• Dependent on sampling effort (have to rarify data)

• Doesn't account for relative abundance of a species

• Very sensitive to rare species/addition of a new species

Rarefaction

Method that lets you standardize sampling effort to compare biodiversity across sites sampled in different ways

What are the four ways of measuring species diversity?

1. Species richness

2. Species evenness

3. Shannon Diversity Index

4. Simpson Diversity Index

Species evenness

relative abundance of each species to other species in a community

How is Shannon Diversity different from species richness/evenness?

It combines species richness and species evenness

How to calculate Shannon Diversity?

-((Proportion of one species times the natural log of that proportion) + (Proportion of another species times the natural log of that proportion))...

What does the Simpson Diversity Index measure?

The probability that 2 individuals drawn at random are the same species

Which measures of diversity are the most and least sensitive to rare species?

Species richness is the most sensitive (cares less about relative abundance).

Simpson diversity is the least sensitive (cares the most about relative abundance).

Shannon diversity is in the middle.

All biodiversity metrics are sensitive to ____________________.

sampling

How is phylogenetic diversity calculated?

Using a phylogenetic tree.

• Take the sum of the length of all the branches leading to the species. Longer branch length = more diverse from ancestor.

What is the functional diversity metric?

Species are weighted based on their ecological distinctiveness

• diversity of role within a community

True or False: Threatened and rare species are distributed according to different properties than global location

True

Alpha Diversity

Species biodiversity of a local community (within-habitat diversity)

Beta Diversity

Change (or turnover) in species composition over small distance (between-habitat)

Gamma Diversity

Total diversity over a large geographic area such as biome, continent, or ocean basin (could be called regional scale alpha diversity)

• combined influence of local alpha diversity and beta diversity

Alpha diversity is declining at a _______________ scale.

global.
- Extinction rate > speciation

Alpha diversity is increasing at a _______________ scale.

regional/continental.

• Invasions

Alpha diversity is about as likely to go up or down at a _______________ scale.

local.

Spacial Beta diversity is _______________ at all scales.

declining

• communities becoming more similar

True or False: Biodiversity is equal to community health.

False

Extinction:

loss of all individuals in the population of a given species

Local Extinction (extirpation):

species disappears in one geographic area but persists in other areas

Global Extinction:

loss of species over its entire range

True or False: over 99% of all species that have existed are now extinct

True

Endemic

species unique to a particular area

Current extinction rates are ______________ times faster than the long term average from the fossil record.

1000

What makes a species vulnerable to extinction?

Specialism

Low reproductive rate (long lives)

Larger animals

Poor dispersal ability (plants)

"Rare" species

• narrow niche

• small populations

• small geographic ranges

__________________ is the largest threat to extinction/endangerment

Habitat loss

What three categories on the IUCN Red List are grouped into the Threatened category?

Critically Endangered

Endangered

Vulnerable

Why is direct observation difficult for measuring extinction rates?

Most species don't have a lot of data about them. Difficult to observe or find.

What do species-area curves compare?

Species richness vs area of habitat

Why might species-area relationships overestimate extinction?

• Doomed species take time to go extinct (might still be saved)

• Protected areas might be better for biodiversity than average

• SAR does not account for species that can live in the new (converted) habitat

Why might species-area relationships underestimate extinction?

Don't account for any factors other than habitat loss.

Within __________ years we could reach 75% threshold of global disappearance (enough for 6th mass extinction)

240-540

True or false: The Endangered Species Act protects invertebrates and plants more than vertebrates.

False

What are 2 problems with the Endangered Species Act?

• It's hard and very slow to get listed

• Most threatened species are not on the list (especially invertebrates)

What are the three options for reversing extinction?

1: breed something similar from existing DNA

2: Mix existing and extinct DNA

3: insert genome of instinct organisms into modern surrogate

The McCauley et. al paper was about:

focusing species deextinction on function

Which species should we revive (3 considerations)?

1. Low levels of functional redundancy

2. Recently extinct

3. Can be returned to meaningful abundance levels

Population

a group of actually or potentially interbreeding organisms occupying a defined area during a specific time.

• In many cases, only count females

• sometimes consider ages/stages separately

Why is determining a population important to us?

Human interests and management actions often occur at population-level scales

Census

count of all individuals

• rare to have a full count

• only practical for small areas/populations

• costly

• common in conservation

Equation to calculate total population from a quadrat sample.

Total observed/area sampled = x/total area

Distance sampling idea

You can estimate the effective area of sampling by looking at how your counts get smaller as you sample farther away.

As number of samples go up, estimate of total population goes ______________

Up or down

As number of samples go up, confidence in our estimate goes _____________

Up

Capture mark recapture equation

(Number of individuals marked in 2nd sample/number of individuals caught the second time) = (Number of individuals marked in 1st sample/Total population (x))

Assumptions of Mark-Recapture Methods

Sampling events pretty close in time

Population is mixing and sampling is random

Tags/traps do not affect recapture, mortality, etc.

No tags are lost

The population is closed

• No movement into the population

• No births/deaths

Main population model

N(t+1) = Nt + B - D + I - E

Geometric/Exponential Population Model Equation

N(t+1) = λNt or

N(t+1) = Nt + RNt or

N(t+1) = λ²Nt (for multiple years)

λ = B-D rate (given)

Relationship between λ and R

λ = 1, R = 0: Stable population

λ < 1, R < 0: Declining population

λ > 1, R > 0: Growing population

How to calculate lambda (λ) given population in Year 0 and Year 1

λ = (Nt+1)/(Nt)

What is the geometric model good for?

Small populations, short-term predictions

What is the logistic growth model good for?

Moderate-large populations

Harvested populations

Longer-term predictions

Logistic Growth Population Equation

N(t+1) = Nt + R(Nt)(1 - Nt/K) - H

Age-specific Fecundity

babies per mother based on age

Transitions in an age-structured population model

• fraction surviving but not growing

• fraction surviving and growing

• number of females producing female eggs

Population Matrix Rule

Year it is now = Column

Year in the future = Row

• Across the top = fecundity

• Ex: What fraction of the population is going from Stage 2 to Stage 5; look at column 2, row 5

In experiments manipulating diversity, what best describes the typical effects of increased biodiversity on a single ecosystem function?

Function goes up as you add species then levels off past around 10 species

T or F: In the distance sampling approach, we estimate an “effective strip half width” to adjust our survey to account for cases where organisms have been double counted.

False