Conservation Exam One

Three Goals of Conservation:

  • Document (biological diversity)

  • Investigate (human impact on ecosystems)

  •  Develop practical approaches to prevent extinctions

Goal over all: prevent human-caused loss of biodiversity

Biodiversity has intrinsic value

Ecological complexity should be maintained

Greek philosopher that recognized the effects humans had on the environment was Plato 

Extirpations: a local extinction of an animal but it can still be found other places

Preservation Ethic: natural areas have spiritual value greater than monetary value

Resource Conservation Ethic: Natural resources should be managed for the greater good

Land Ethic: human land use enhances or improves biodiversity

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transcendentalism

John Muir: Preservation Ethic 

Gifford Pinchot: Resource Conservation ethic, sustainable development

Aldo Leopold: Land ethic, ecosystem management 

Ellen Swallow: taught first ecology class, chemist, water testing

Rachel Carson: wrote Silent spring, helped ban DDT

First international conservation conference was held at san diego wild animal park in 1978

Government started making acts to help Conservation

Increased coverage about Conservation: Netflix documentaries, Nat Geo

Three Levels of Biodiversity:

  • Species diversity

  • Genetic diversity

  • Ecosystem diversity

Typological notion of a species: Taxidermy one of them and then anything that looks like it is in the species. 

Essentialist notion of a species: Says that the same species share a certain inner quality or essence which sets them apart from other species.

Typological and Essentialist notion of a species did not account for morphological properties (male and female birds)

Cladistic Species Concept: grouped by shared and derived traits (cladograms)

Most frequently used is the idea of reproduction isolation mean a biological difference so animals that can produce viable offspring are of the same species but if they would originally be found around each other then they are still separated (tigers and lions example)

Speciation: the origin of new species, focus of evolutionary theory (Galapagos)

Extinction rates are 100-1000 times faster than the speciation rates

Species Richness: Count the species in an area

Alpha diversity: how many species are in a specific area (100 ha)

Gamma Diversity: how many species are in a larger geographical scale (like a whole mountain)

Beta: Gamma/Alpha (G before A)

Population: a group of individuals that interbreed and produce viable offspring

Species: One or more separate populations

Sexual reproduction and meiosis increase genetic variation

Gene pool: total array of genes and alleles

Genotype: combinations of alleles 

Phenotype: physical characteristics

Natural selection: change in gene frequency 

Biological communities: species in a specified area and their interactions

Ecosystem: the biological community and the chemical and physical environments its associated with

Limiting resource: resource that limits the population size of a species

Ecological Succession: Gradual change in species composition, community structure, soil chemistry, and microclimate following a disturbance.

Intermediate disturbance hypothesis: The highest diversity occurs in landscapes with intermediate level of disturbances

Competition: species compete for limited resources

Carrying capacity: The population the resource can support (prey exceed carrying capacity if predator is removed)

Mutalism: two species benefit each other 

Symbiotic: close long-term relationship

Biomass decreases up the foodchain 

food web: species linked through feeding relationships

Guilds: species at the same trophic level (cows and deers)

Ecosystem Integrity: how “intact” an ecosystem is 

Resistance: ability to maintain original state

Resilience: ability to return to original state

Over halve the world's species are in the tropical rain forest

Diversity generally increases with:

  • decreasing elevation

  • Increasing solar radiation

  • Increasing precipitation

Species-Area relationship: area is directly proportional to the number of species (greater area provides more diverse habitat)

Theories on why increased biodiversity near the topics:

  • more stable climate

  • warm temperature and wet environment

  • Predictable environment 

  • One of the largest geographical areas

Ecological Economics: New field that studies the interactions between economic and ecological systems

Externalities: hidden costs or benefits not directly involved in an exchange.

open-access resource: Water, Soil, Air owned by everyone

tragedy of the commons: Value of open-access resource is lost to all of society (water pollution)

Common property: resource owned by society but regulated for common benefit (water shed act)

Environmental impact assessment: describes present and future effects of projects

Precautionary Principle: err on the side of caution (might be more harmful than originally thought)

Perverse Subsides: government promotion of environment damaging activities with tax breaks

Discount rates: lowering current value of resources that will be used in future.

GDP: gross domestic product index of national product

GPI: Genuine Progress Indicator includes loss of farmlands and impact of effects of pollution on human health

ESI: Environmental Stability Index

Marketplace value: harvested (meat)

Unharvested value: ecotourism

future value: breed live stock

Direct use: harvested (firewood)

Indirect Use: intact (education, recreation)

Existence value: how much is someone willing to pay to protect a species (pandas)

 Consumptive use: consumed locally dose not show up on GDP

Productive value: consumed nationally

Substitute cost approach: how much would a local have to pay to buy the product (domestic animal meats)

Nonconsumptive use value: leaving the environment as is

-coral reefs act as a storm break

-forest are carbon sinks

-vegetation shields soil from rain

-wetland protect from floods and filter water

Environmental Indicators: Canaries in mines and lichens

 Negatives of ecotourism; increased disturbance, no money going to park management, increased demand from natural areas

Option value: ability to provide an economic benefit at some point in the future. (Genetic improvement of crops)

bioprospecting: searching of compounds in wild organisms to fight diseases

biopiracy: unauthorized collection for commercial use

Environmental Ethics: ethical value of nature

Intrinsic value: each species has a value for its own sake

Whole ecosystem should be conserved Dr.Paul Ehrlich “spaceship earth”

Environmental Justice: empower the poor and weak to protect their own environments.

Enlightened self interest: preserving biodiversity makes us happier.

Affluenza:  unending pursuit of material wealth



Which diversity metric provides a measurement of how unique particular sites are within a region?

  • Beta diversity

Keystone species:

  • have relatively low biomass and high impact in the community.

Which of the following is NOT a goal of conservation biology?

  • political activism to protect the natural environment

What was the main barrier that prevented the population recovery of the Greater Prairie Chicken in the paper by Westemeier et al. 1998?

  • low genetic variability

Which of the following people is the main proponent of the preservationist ethic, which affirms that natural areas have spiritual value beyond what can be gained by economic exploitation?

  • John Muir

According to Shannon's Index, if two communities had the same species richness, the one that was dominated by a few species would have ________________  diversity relative to the community that had a more even distribution.

  • less

Which taxonomic group has the most described number of species?

  • Insects

In which area would you expect to find a community with the greatest overall biodiversity?

  • Warm year-round and relatively high precipitation

A shark is an example of a:

  • Secondary consumer

The amount of money people are willing to pay to protect a species from going extinct for future generations is:

  • bequest value

Tax breaks to companies that support non-profitable resource extraction are known as:

  • perverse subsidies

Which of the following is an open- access resource?

  • Air

What is a main difference between the gross domestic product (GDP) and the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)?

  • The GPI accounts for environmental and human health factors.

Indigenous people living near a  forest obtain firewood from the forest for cooking fuel. When the forest is cleared for agriculture, they no longer have that fuel source and must buy cooking fuel (kerosene) from the market at a price of $1.18/ gallon. The value of $1.18/gallon represents the ________________ value for an equal fuel amount in firewood.

  • consumptive use

Healthcare costs associated with diseases caused by pollution from a proposed nearby factory are not taken into account in the cost-benefit analysis. This is known as:

  • an externality

Which of the following is an example of productive use value?

  • Rosewood exported for making guitars

Match the Value with the type of use:

Firewood: Direct Use Value

Potential useful gene: Option Value

maintain diversity: existence value

Erosion control: Indirect Use Value (non-option)