| 1. What factors contribute to the low life expectancy in many countries? |
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| Any factor (limiting factor) in the environment influencing carrying capacity. Four main factors: Raw material availability Energy availability Waste accumulation and disposal Organism interaction |
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| 2. Know the story of Easter Island and the reasons for their population crash. |
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| Without the trees, the rich soil washed into the oceannow difficult to grow crops; carrying capacity of island decreased |
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| 3. What is the difference between local and total carrying capacity? What is the result of using renewable resources way beyond their sustainable limit? |
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| In many parts of the world, food availability is the first limiting factor – 1 billion people malnourished – conversion of forests to agriculture OK in short term, but lowers productivity in long termOther parts of the world have excess food, but use tremendous amounts of fossil fuels |
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| 4. Understand how energy flows through the food web |
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| Food Chain — Passage of energy from one trophic level to the next due to one organism consuming another.
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| Understand bioaccumulation and how that can affect human populations |
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| Biomagnification – an accumulation of a contaminant in an organism at a higher trophic level |
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| 1.Be familiar with the system for classifying living things. Know the biological species concept.
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| Classification ranked according to – similarity – common ancestrySpecies are groups of interbreeding organisms.-Biological Species Concept |
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| 2.Be able to define biological diversity and scales of diversity. |
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| “the variety and variability among living organisms and the ecological complexes in which they occur”Ecosystem level diversity – Variation in ecosystems across alandscape or region. Community level diversity – Variation in species assemblagesbased on variation in habitat within an ecosystem type.Species diversity – The number of species in a given community.Genetic diversity – Amount of genetic variation within or among populations of a given species. |
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| 3.Know the relative diversity of different animal phyla |
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| 4.Understand historical versus current extinction rates. |
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| 5.Understand 2 principle ways that nature can advance science |
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| 1) Nature provides compounds of immense importance to science and medicine 2) Nature provides inspiration for a wide variety of scientific disciplines |
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| 6.Understand the tragedy of the commons. |
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| concept of ecosystem engineers |
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| Influence communities by physically modifying an ecosystemBeaver : Transforms its territory from a stream to a small pond or swamp |
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