| 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 ocean
now 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 term
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Other 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 ancestry
Species 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 a
landscape or region.
Community level diversity – Variation in species assemblages
based 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 ecosystem
Beaver : Transforms its territory from a stream to a small pond or swamp |
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