Conservation Biology Final Exam Study Guide

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Policy Letters

  • Influence legislative policies and advocate for conservation efforts. They are a direct way to communicate concerns, scientific findings, and recommendations to policy makers.

  • Policy letters in conservation biology help translate scientific findings into actionable policies for protecting biodiversity and ecosystems. They provide guidelines and recommendations based on research to influence decision-making and promote sustainable conservation practices.

IUCN Red List

  • Seeks to raise global awareness by providing evaluation of the conservation status of species categorizing them by risk extinction. Species can range from Least Concern, Vulnerable, Endangered, critically endangered, to extinct.

  • The list gives information on geographical ranges, population trends, key habitats, and threats to species. This information helps determine the species at most need of conservation efforts and how to prevent further species extinction risk.

  • Used by various governmental agencies/ orgs to inform policy decisions and conservation priorities.

Simbio: Patchy Prairies

  • Native prairie habitats declining due to urbanization and agriculture leading to increased effects of habitat fragmentation, including reduced population sizes and increased risk of extinction

  • Fender’s Blue Butterfly depends on specific lupine species like Kincaid Lupine in order to reproduce (keystone species)

  • Conservation strategies include creating habitat corridors, enlarging existing patches, and creating stepping stones to increase habitat connectivity and supporting species survival.

  • Periodic fires can maintain woody species and promote native growth but can kill the butterfly larvae.

  • Simulation models help understand ecological dynamics without direct experimentation.

Turtle Creek Story Map- Savannah Rhoades

  • Multi-agency collaboration in conservation projects: Funding comes from various agencies. (e.g. USFWS) The Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy (NPC) secures funding, manages, and pays bills.

  • Role of community and landowners: Landowners are key partners in restoration efforts. They collaborate with conservation districts and other agencies to restore their land.

  • Monitoring and Eval: Continuous monitoring and survey work is done to assess quality of streams

  • Project planning and implementation: Planned and executed with help of environmental engineers and various departments (e.g. EPA)

Habitat Conservation Plans

Describes features of interest for a given protected area, threats to those features, and sets up clear objectives of how to conserve those features.

  • Steps involved in plans

    • Identifying species and land that needs protection

    • Gather data like population trends, habitat, threats etc using IUCN red list

    • Assess the threats and come up with strategies and goals

    • Get public involved like (local communities, government agencies, landowners etc.)

    • Develop adaptive management plan for monitoring

    • Determine funding sources

    • Draft the plan and get feedback from public. Submit plan and wait to get approved. Once approved begin implementing plan and continuously monitor and adaptively manage.

  • Strengths and limitations of plans

    • HCPs are flexible, target ecosystem-approach benefits, and involve public and community involvement.

    • However, they require careful planning, can be costly, and have to be monitored over a long period.

How to cite a reference

  • In text citation= Author’s last name and year of publication (Smith et al. 2020)

  • Reference List= References in alphabetical order by author’s last name. Year of pub. Title. Journal Name (italicized). Volume, (issue): page numbers

    • Smith JD, Jones AM. 2020. The effects of habitat fragmentation. Ecology. 105(2):55-65.

Debate Summary

  • Summarize both sides and which one do you support more strongly and why?

    • Protecting species

      • Protecting individual species is a targeted approach that leads to more effective conservation efforts because of the importance of umbrella and keystone species as well as ecological engineers like the Yellowstone wolves that had benefited the whole ecosystem. Species that hold cultural and symbolic value or are charismatic gets the public involved and brings in extra funding to go toward their conservation. Protecting one individual species is overall cheaper and will likely receive more support from policymakers and the public.

    • Protecting Land

      • Preserving land is a broader approach that benefit multiples species and habitats.

    • Support Protecting species more strongly because even through their protection they can protect multiple other species and entire ecosystems acting as an umbrella species. Through flagship and charismatic species they are able to garner more support from policymakers and the public which are key factors in conservation efforts. Overall Pricing and funding is lower and can go towards other branches like research instead of large amounts of funding into maintain and labor of the land.

Senior Scholars Day

  • Relate research topics to class concepts

    • The two research topics that I observed talked about the impact of habitat and time on fruit removal rates in American Pokeweed. Key findings from the topics were that habitat had no effect on fruit removal rate, but over time fruit received more damage and had less nutritional value. Frugivores could tell if fruit was intact or damaged as well as having less nutrition, which affected their foraging behavior, leading to reduced seed dispersal and species interaction. Their findings relate to conservation topics like habitat loss and destruction which would lead to increased fruit damage, bringing a negative cascade of events to the ecosystem. give rise to how important it is to maintain ecosystem functions

Interactions between biology and goals of conservation biology

  • Biology and Conservation biology go hand in hand. The study of biology provides the foundation for which conservation biology uses and builds upon to prioritize conservation efforts. Biology explores diversity of life at different levels like genetically, species, and ecosystem which conservation seeks to preserve.

Review and Interpret graphs from in-class presentations- modules

Lecture Material-notebook, ppts

  • Climate Change (Chapter 8)

    • Historic trends.

      • For the past 1,000 years temperature were stable but began to rise during the last century. The average temperature over the past 10,000 years is 59 F and over the past 130 years there has been an increase in surface temperature of about 0.75 C

    • Greenhouse gases and effects

      • Major greenhouse gases in atmosphere are water vapor, CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide.

      • The increase in these gases are the result of burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and agriculture.

    • Human activities and current warming

    • Factors affecting Earth’s temperature

    • Effects of global warming and mitigation

      • 1) Melting ice and snow

        • artic sea ice has decreased between 1979 and 2007

        • In alaska, villages are in danger of flooding

      • 2) Rising Sea levels

        • Global sea level has risen about 17cm in the last century

        • Threatens coastal wetlands and coral reefs and disrupts coastal fisheries

        • Flooding occurs in agricultural lowlands, coastal cities, and barrier islands, eroding coastlines

      • 3) Changing Ocean currents

      • 4) Warmer more acidic oceans

        • Warmer temps decrease ocean’s ability to remove and store CO2 by decreasing nutrient supply for phytoplankton and increasing the acidity of ocean water

      • 5) Extreme weather pattens

        • Some areas receive prolonged heat waves and droughts or prolonged heavy rains and increased flooding

      • 6) Effects on biodiversity

        • Extinction of species due to loss of habitat

        • Increase in pest populations

        • Higher incidence of forest fires

      • 7) Food production

        • Farming depends on a stable climate but in a warmer world, agricultural productivity may increase in some areas and not in others due to crop and fish production being reduced in areas where rising sea levels flood river deltas

        • Crop pests and spread of diseases may be more common.

      • 8) Humans- increased incidence of mortality among humans due to deaths from heat and spread of disease as well as disruption of the food supply.

      • Poor nations in the tropics would suffer the most

    • Mitigation and dealing with global warming

      • Difficult to deal with because it is a global problem, the effects will last a long time and therefore it is a long-term political issue

      • Mitigation by reducing ghg emissions to slow the rate of temperature increase

      • Adaptation by recognizing some warming is unavoidable and devising strategies to reduce harmful effects

    • Case study on coqui frog

      • Climate warming has direct effects on amphibians like change in temperature and a decrease in moisture. Indirect effects include reduced prey populations, loss of pond habitats and shorter hydroperiods, and increased risk of disease. These all lead to loss of amphibian populations

  • Role of People in Conservation (Chapters 14 & 15)

    • Examples from course

    • Common misperceptions

    • Tragedy of the Commons

      • Who coined the term

        • Garret Hardin

      • Meaning and solutions

        • Def: The degradation of renewable free-access resources due to overexploitation.

        • Solutions

    • Forces mediating human-environment relations

Economic Aspects

  • Review Aldo Leopold’s views

    • Proposed a land ethic where humans are apart of the ecological community which deserves moral and inheret value not just what they can be used for. Advocated for economocially sustainable managament and strategies like eco-tourism, and sustainable resource management.

  • Study figures from the book

Examine Extinction Crisis

  • Extinction Crisis (Chapter 10)

    • Historical extinctions (e.g., Passenger pigeon)

      • Passenger pigeon once most numerous bird on earth having a population of about 3.7 billion but due to hunting populations significantly decreased. Due to over-harvest and habitat loss they became extinct in the wild by 1900.

      • Early extinction on hawaiin islands where endemic bird species went extinct with first human contact. In madagascar 40% of large mammals went extinct after first human contact

    • Types of extinction

      • Locally: species no longer found in area once inhabited but still found elsewhere in the world

      • Ecologically: Occurs when only a few members left they no longer play

      • Globally: species no longer found on the earth

    • Population extinction and the Endangered Species Act

      • higher than species extinction

      • loss of local population means loss of ecosystem services provided by that species locally

      • US does populations of some species like the FL panther and grizzly bears through the ESA

  • Legislation: CITES, ESA

    • Efforts to weaken and improve the ESA

    • Role of habitat conservation plans

    • Sanctuaries and other efforts (e.g., NGOs, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund)

Study Protected Areas and Threats

  • Different types of protected areas

  • Threats to protected areas

  • Costa Rica case study

  • Nature reserve design

    • Reserve size, corridors, buffer zones

  • Adaptive management

  • Efforts to protect aquatic habitats

Review Conservation Strategies

Evaluate Extinction Rates

  • Pre-European extinctions

    • Hawaiian islands and madagascar

  • Reasons extinction rates are underestimated

    • New species being discovered each year

    • Human pop growth and resource use

    • Climate change

  • Trends in extinction threat for different taxa and regions

    • Extinction more in hotspots and birds less vulnerable

  • Characteristics making species prone to extinction

    • Low reproductive rate

    • Specialized niche

    • Narrow distribution

  • Documentation difficulties of extinction

  • Other levels of threat (e.g., IUCN Red List)