Conservation Biology
Conservation Biology (ECOL 406/506)
19 September 2009
Suggested Review Topics for First Midterm Exam
(Exam I is Thursday 24 September).
Please review your readings and lecture notes for material through 22 September 2009 (through relvant Ch4 material). Your exam will take place in two parts. The first will be a typical individual exam which should take you about 55 minutes. The second part will be about 20 minutes in groups of four students on a short set of additional bonus questions. See your syllabus for grading details.
The following questions were generated as I looked through my lectures (there may be information about a topic in more than one lecture). If there is a topic we didn’t discuss in lecture then I probably won’t ask about it on the exam; unless it is a major concept or idea from your assigned readings.
Introduction, Footprint
1. Why does the dynamic nature of ecosystems create problems for conservation biologists?
2. How long have humans been around relative to the age of the earth?
3. How many humans are there now? How long ago were there only a billion people.
4. What does “ecological footprint” mean? How is it calculated? What are the units?
5. What are the biggest contributors to an individual’s ecological footprint?
6. What besides personal choices can influence the size of an ecological footprint?
7. Why did the class ecological footprint average (ha/ person) drop by about half when pretending to be from a different country?
8. What does the IPAT acronym stand for? How is it useful?
9. Why has human population sky-rocketed in the past 200 years?
10. Define ecosystem service and give three examples.
11. What are you planning to do for your creativity project later in the semester?
What is Conservation Biology? Where did it come from?
12. Define Conservation Biology.
13. If conservation biology is value laden and mission driven is it therefore not science?
14. Is conservation biology a crisis discipline? Why or why not?
15. What are Soule’s (1985) five normative postulates?
16. Distinguish between conservation and preservation.
17. What are the pros and cons of using intrinsic value in arguments for conserving biodiversity?
18. Highlight three differences between the idea of a “romantic-transcendentalist preservation ethic” and a “resource conservation ethic.”
19. Define ethic. Is there more than one definition? Why is discussion of ethics relevant to conservation biology?
20. What is the Madagascar Periwinkle Argument and why are some conservation biologists opposed to its use?
21. Explain why aesthetic beauty is an instrumental value.
22. For what research is Rachel Carson well known?
23. What is a superfund site?
24. Where on the logistic growth curve do we theoretically have MSY? Can you explain the different parts of the logistic growth curve and why the curve changes over time?
25. Explain the tragedy of the commons.
26. What three kinds of Justice did we discuss? Why are they relevant to conservation biology?
Aldo Leopold
27. Succinctly describe Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.
28. What is Leopold’s A-B Cleavage?
29. How does Leopold define community? What does he mean by ‘violence’?
30. What about Leopold’s writing is most helpful for conservation biologists? Are there aspects of his writings that could or should be improved?
31. What difference does it make if a farm is primarily a place to live or primarily a factory?
32. What did Thoreau mean by “In wildness is the salvation of the world”?
33. Explain the ecological lesson Leopold professes to have learned in Thinking Like a Mountain.
34. What lesson would Leopold teach us if he was evaluating the implications of plastic trees in medians in Los Angeles?
35. Do you think we “strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness”? What are the implications of your answer?
36. What did Leopold mean when he wrote “To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs”?
Biodiversity
37. Define biodiversity.
38. How many major extinction events have there been in the history of life on this planet?
39. What is an adaptive radiation? How are they related to the previous question?
40. How many species are there? How did you arrive at your answer? Are you confident in your answer?
41. Most species are insects. Do you believe this conclusion is true?
42. Which taxa do we know the most/least about?
43. How is species richness correlated with latitude? Altitude?
44. Are all taxa more common in the tropics than elsewhere?
45. Describe five factors that are generally correlated with high diversity.
46. What are the two abiotic drivers of biome differences?
47. Why do islands have lots of endemic species?
48. How were hotspots defined by Myers et al. (2000)? Why did they emphasize congruence in their paper?
49. Explain the importance of the species-area relationship to conservation biology.
50. Define “species”. Justify your definition. What was Ernst Mayr’s definition of species?
51. Approximately how many species are on the endangered species list in the US? What percent of those are Hawaiian endemics?
52. How is a keystone species different than an umbrella species?
53. Explain alpha, beta, and gamma diversity. What is missing from these approaches?
54. What does beta rarity tell you about an ecosystem?
55. If given a set of data, could you calculate the Shannon Diversity index? How is this index useful or not useful?
56. How are richness and abundance different?
57. What is meant by “geographic replacement”?
58. What is a niche? What is a generalist?
59. How is a functional type different from a functional analog? Can you give an example?
60. What use is Whittaker’s Measure?
61. Are all species equivalent? Justify your answer.
62. To what do the components of this equation refer?: R=(D+U)(deltaP/C)
63. How many orders of reptiles are there? Are any of these in trouble?
64. Why is the one-way flow of energy, and cycling of all else (e.g., nutrients), important to understand?
65. How is resilience different than resistance?
66. What is a cryptic species?
67. What is a gene? An allele? A polymorphic trait?
68. At what scales can we consider genetic diversity?
69. How do you calculate the expected heterozygosity under Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium? How is observed heterozygosity useful in telling you about inbreeding?
70. Explain how Wright’s Fst value is useful for understanding gene flow.
71. What does H=2Nm mean? What does it tell you about the importance of population size? Why do we care about heterozygosity?
72. Genetically, what happens during introgression?
Biodiversity Valuation
73. What conclusion do Costanza et al. come too in their paper? Do you think their numbers are correct?
74. What is the take-home message of the Driessen paper on DDT and malaria? How does this lesson impact conservation biology?
75. Are all habitat types in the world subject to similar human threats?
76. Why does a positive discount rate present a challenge to conservation biologists?
77. Why might valuation methods that rely on “willingness to pay” or “willingness to accept compensation” be suspect?
78. What are the four types of biodiversity valuation discussed in your text?
79. Explain some of the potential pros and cons of ecotourism.
80. Define externality and give an example. What does it mean for an externality to be “positive” or “negative”?
81. Compare the concepts of economic growth and economic development.
82. What are nonrival and nonexclusive goods?
83. Is privatization of property the answer to all conservation problems? Any of them?
84. What does Herman Daly advocate?
85. Why do some environmental economists spend a lot of time and energy discussing “throughput”?
Don Swann, Saguaro National Park
86. Where is SNP? Why was it established?
87. Name one invasive species and one disease that are each threatening local biodiversity. What is their global connection?
88. Don talked about a 6-step approach to conservation challenges (paraphrased here):
a. What is the need?
b. What is the problem?
c. What do we need to know to address the problem?
d. What can we try?
e. Did it work?
f. What did we learn?
What about these steps begs for the use of science? Can you give an example that Don presented of science being applied in this way?
89. Why did Don argue that species inventories and some form of monitoring are important?
90. What important concepts did Don present between 1500-1515h?
Threats to Biodiversity
91. What is the biggest threat to biodiversity?
92. What is the edge-effect?
93. How can invasive species negatively impact native biodiversity? Are invasive species more of a problem now than 50 years ago? Why or why not?
94. Define biocontrol. When is biocontrol a useful tool for controlling invasive species? What are the potential pitfalls of the biocontrol approach?
95. Think of potential exam questions that arise in lecture on Tues 22 September from material in Chapter 4 that are not covered in this list of questions.
Suerte!
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