Conservation Biology



Conservation Biology (ECOL 406/506)

19 September 2008

Suggested Review Topics for First Midterm Exam

(75 points on Thursday 25 September 2008).

Please review your readings and lecture notes for material through 23 September 2008 (through Ch4 material). Your exam will take place in two parts. The first will be a typical individual exam which should take you about 50 minutes. The second part will be about 25 minutes in groups of four students on a short set of additional 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.

26 & 28 Aug 2008, Introduction

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 of about 62 ha/ person change to about 22 ha/person 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?

02 September 2008, What is Conservation Biology? Where did it come from?

12. Define Conservation Biology.

13. Is conservation biology a science? A crisis discipline? Why or why not?

14. What are Soule’s (1985) five normative postulates?

15. Distinguish between conservation and preservation.

16. What are the pros and cons of using intrinsic value in arguments for conserving biodiversity?

17. Highlight three differences between the idea of a “romantic-transcendentalist preservation ethic” and a “resource conservation ethic.”

18. Define ethic. Is there more than one definition? Why is discussion of ethics relevant to conservation biology?

19. What is the Madagascar Periwinkle Argument and why are some conservation biologists opposed to its use?

20. Explain why aesthetic beauty is an instrumental value.

21. For what research is Rachel Carson well known?

22. If Conservation Biology is value laden and mission driven is it therefore not science?

23. Where on the logistic growth curve do we theoretically have MSY?

24. Are humans endangered? How is the ESA applicable?

25. Why is placement of the burden of proof (“conservationists” vs. “developers”) important?

26. Explain the tragedy of the commons.

27. What three kinds of Justice did we discuss? Why are they relevant to conservation biology?

04 & 09 September 2008, Leopold

28. Succinctly describe Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic.

29. What is Leopold’s A-B Cleavage?

30. How does Leopold define community? What does he mean by ‘violence’?

31. What about Leopold’s writing is most helpful for conservation biologists? Are there aspects of his writings that could be improved?

32. What difference does it make if a farm is a place to live or a factory?

33. What did Thoreau mean by “In wildness is the salvation of the world”?

34. Explain the ecological lesson Leopold professes to have learned in Thinking Like a Mountain.

35. What lesson would Leopold teach us if he was evaluating the implications of plastic trees in medians in Los Angeles?

36. Do you think we “strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, longlife, and dullness”?

09 & 11 September 2008, 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. Most species are insects. Do you believe this conclusion is true?

41. Which taxa do we know the most/least about?

42. How is species richness correlated with latitude? Altitude?

43. Are all taxa more common in the tropics than elsewhere?

44. Describe five factors that are generally correlated with high diversity.

45. What are the two abiotic drivers of biome differences?

46. Why do islands have lots of endemic species?

47. How were hotspots defined by Myers et al. (2000)? Why did they emphasize congruence in their paper?

48. Explain the species area relationship. Is it linear on non-log axes? What are the implications of your answer?

49. Explain, using a graph, Rosenzweig’s three-step loss of biodiversity.

50. Define “species”. Justify your definition.

51. 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. If given a set of data, could you calculate the Shannon Diversity index? How is this index useful or not useful?

55. How are richness and abundance different?

56. What is meant by “geographic replacement”?

57. What is a niche? What is a generalist?

58. How is a functional type different from a functional analog? Can you give an example?

59. What use is Whittaker’s Measure?

60. Are all species equivalent? Justify your answer.

61. To what do the components of this equation refer?: R=(D+U)(deltaP/C)

62. How many orders of reptiles are there? Are any of these in trouble?

11 & 18 September, Biodiversity and Valuation

63. Why is the one-way flow of energy, and cycling of all else, important to understand?

64. How is resilience different than resistance?

65. What is a cryptic species?

66. What is a gene? An allele? A polymorphic trait?

67. At what scales can we consider genetic diversity?

68. How do you calculate the expected heterozygosity under Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium? How is observed heterozygosity useful in telling you about inbreeding?

69. Explain how Wright’s Fst value is useful for understanding gene flow.

70. What does H=2Nm mean? What does it tell you about the importance of population size? Why do we care about heterozygosity?

71. Genetically, what happens during introgression?

72. Are all species equivalent?

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.

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. Name three things Herman Daly would advocate.

85. Why do some environmental economists spend a lot of time and energy discussing “throughput”?

16 September 2008, 4 Spikes, Guy McPherson

86. What are the four spikes? Why are they called spikes?

87. Explain the concept of Peak Oil.

88. What is meant by the übermensch? How does it relate to Leopold’s writings?

89. What is meant by Runaway Greenhouse?

90. Approximately how much money did McPherson say would be needed to protect 70% of the world’s species forever? Do you agree with this amount?

91. What percent of the products of photosynthesis do humans now use in some way?

92. How many great apes exist in the world today as compared to humans?

93. The US comprises what percent of the world’s population?

94. Are we doomed by our evolutionary heritage to destroy the planet?

95. How many of the world’s people live on less than $3/day? Why is this relevant to conservation biology?

96. How does a predicament differ from a problem?

97. Do you agree that evolution dealt us a bad hand?

98. Will “getting back to the stone age” solve our biodiversity crisis?

18 & 23 Sept 2008, Threats to Biodiversity

99. Think of potential exam questions that arise in lecture on Tues 23 September from material in Chapter 4 that are not covered in this list of questions.

100. Define phenology. How are global climate change, phenology, and conservation related? (Walther et al. paper)

101. What is the biggest threat to biodiversity?

102. What is the edge-effect?

Suerte!

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download