wetland final

1.      Why are underground storage organs so critical to survival for wetland plants during anaerobic conditions?

a.      No oxygen cant efficiently create energy. Need stores of glucose so they can perform glycolysis for energy

2.      What is the ultimate reason plants die in flooded conditions?

a.      Are not getting enough o2 to make enough energy

3.      Why is it difficult for most plants to acquire water while growing in salt water? How do halophytes deal with this issue?

a.      Concentration of solutes is higher in salt water than inside of plant so water tends to stay out of plant instead of flowing in. Halophytes increase concentrations of salt inside their roots so water diffuses in

4.      How do species coexist if experiments using a single limiting resource usually show competitive exclusion (one species wins while the other dies out)?

a.      Usually more than one limiting resource in a wild ecosystem. Spp become able to tolerate lower levels of differet limiting resource

b.      Adapting to live in suboptimal habitats if out competed.

5.      You are managing a local wetland and notice large areas of Typha damage and removal. You think it is the work of a mammalian herbivore (likely muskrats), but you aren’t sure. Describe a simple manipulation experiment you could perform to see if your hypothesis is correct?

a.      Section off an area of typha that hasn’t been disturbed. Make sure animals cant get thru.

6.      Why don’t all plant species produce all known types of chemical defense compounds to deter herbivores?

a.      Chemical compounds are likely ancestral and plants have to have genes present already to express that specific compound

7.      What is one reason mowing wetlands in Europe (e.g., sedge beds) increases plant diversity? Why might this not necessarily work in the United States?

8.      Describe how an organism’s realized niche is similar and different to its fundamental niche?

a.      Realized niches incorporate abiotic and biotic constraints to a spp survival and reproduction. It includes competition, herbivory, predation and other interactions. Fundamental niches only identify abiotic constraints to survival like precipitation rates and temperature.

9.      You are studying a wetland that has 4 different zones. Each zone is dominated by a different plant species and occupies a different range in water depth. How can you experimentally test if competition plays a role in the formation of the four zones?

a.      You can experimentally test this by isolating the plants from eachother, making sure interaction isn’t possible, and planting them in the zones that you wouldn’t usually find them. If they grow the area they are in is probably their realized niche and they are being blocked from establishing elsewhere bc of competition and not bc of abiotic constraints.

Additional Example Short Answer Questions

1.      Compare and contrast aerobic respiration and anaerobic metabolism. Make sure to discuss all the negative consequences of flooding in terms of anaerobic metabolism.

a.      Anaerobic metabolism is not as efficient as aerobic metabolism and makes less energy than respiration bc it relies on glycolysis to produce atp rather than oxidative phosphorylation. Aerobic respiration produces more energy and its final product is ATP water and Co2. Anaerobic metabolism's final products are lactic acid, ethanol, and alanine, which increases risk of cell acidification that hinders normal cellular functioning.

2.      Describe three ecosystem services wetlands provide. How would you try to estimate the dollar value of each service?

a.      Water filtration. – wetlands act as buffers and take up/filter out pollutants from runoff. They slow water down catching pollutants in accumulated sediment.

b.      Nutrient cycling – wetlands store huge amounts of carbon, as well as take up and transform nitrogen and phosphorus

c.       Habitat. – critical habitat for waterfowl and endangered species like the bog turtle.

3.      Explain why light competition is an example of asymmetric competition?

a.      Light competition is asymmetrical bc there are usually better competitors for this. Tall fast growing spp.

4.      What are the main differences between how Clements and Gleason saw biological communities? Which do you think is more correct? Why? Make sure your defense is supported by science and not feelings.

a.      Coexisting facilitators. One super organism. interdependence

b.      Opposing not interconnected. Competition evolutionary arms race. Independence.

c.       I think Clements is mostly right but Gleason’s view can be incorporated. Communities are interconnected bc all organisms in one community are influenced by things like competition and competitive exclusion. All organisms have individual constraints on their survival but there are predictable patterns of succession in nature after a random disturbance event based on climate and precipitation, but nature doesn’t always follow those patterns. I think it also depends on perspective, whether your looking at how a community arises as a whole or individually.

 But I don’t think the dominating plant community would change unless random seeds ended up in that area and even then they might not survive due to abiotic constraints and biotic constraints bc that spp has not evolved with other spp in the new area they ended up in.

5.      If salt water is so harsh for plants, why do plants live in coastal salt marshes?

a.      Plants upland or in less salty water are better competitors. Plants that live in coastal salt marshes are better at dealing with stress than competing

6.      According to the centrifugal model, only a couple species dominant in the wetland “core” areas. If this is the case, why are wetlands considered habitats with high biodiversity? Are wetlands predicted to easily maintain their high biodiversity in the future? Why?

a.      Wetlands are areas that experience disturbance and stress, and competition. From flooding, anoxic soils, and nutrient runoff, there are many environmental gradients creating higher amounts of biodiversity. No because of eutrophication, agriculture, and humans reducing natural disturbances like flooding.

7.      Are morphological or chemical defenses more common in wetland plants? Give a hypothesis as to why this might be the case?

a.      I would say chemical because wetland plants deal with more competition and herbivory from small herbivores like insects

8.      If succession caused wetland zonation, what would the climax community be? Is wetland zonation usually an example of succession? How do we know? Do any wetlands show more of a sgnal of succession than others? Which one?

a.      Large trees. Not really because it is just a short term response of plants to disturbance and competition. Peatlands show more signs of succession  

9.      Compare and contrast wetland restoration, rehabilitation, and transformation. Give an example of a situation where each would be appropriate.

a.      Restoration would be a complete to almost completely degraded habitat back to its natural state. Restoring natural flow and water levels. Maybe ag land back to it historic state would be a restoration project.

b.      A rehab project might be somewhere that is a little disturbed and has lost some biodiversity. Maybe invasives have taken over. Rehab would be trying to improve the biodiversity or function that was lost and/or remove invasives. Maintenance but not back to historic state

c.       Transformation would be changing a system from one function to another. In this case a place that isn’t a wetland to a wetland. Conversion of a type fo wetland to another type of wetland.

10.   What were the main objectives of the Nahlik and Fennessy 2016 Nature Communications paper? What were their main findings? Make sure to comment on what region held the most C, the effects of disturbance on C storage, and if more total C was held in blue versus teal C types.

a.      The regions that held the most carbon were the Midwest and upper east coast

b.      Main objectives were to quantify the north American carbon stock and desnity in order to guide future climate change mgmt. decisions

c.       Main finding – In the US, Eastern mountains and upper Midwest and most carbon stock bc of low temps and lack of decomp, tidal salines also had a lot due to longer periods of inundation sediment build up and burying or organic matter – coastal plains and interior had p low amounts bc of frequent drying and low carbon sequestration rates (CO2 being taken from atmosphere and converted)

-Differences in C densities p small in saline vs inland Wl’s but Greatest differences in the bottom most layers – tidal held more carbon and held it more uniformly vs inland sites decreasing in C as depth increased

-Despite these differences technically inland wetlands had a greater amount of Carbon stocks bc of sheer size.

-Anthropogenic disturbance like Ag and suburbanization can have direct and indirect consequences. Indirect would be the corn belt example on pg 4.