Discussion Questions
Pena, Chapter 1
From the Introduction:
“La Tierra Es Vida” The Land is life.
This is a land ethic for many Mexican-origin peoples living in Southern CO and
Northern NM.
These people also have folk tales and warnings about others who suffer from
sinverguenzas – “a shameless indifference to the harm that others suffer as a consequence
of their actions, which are for individual gain.”
Q: Does sinverguenzas exist today in our culture?
Q: Why does it exist?
From Chapter 1, Principles of Scientific Ecology:
1. What is ecology? ‘Study of organisms and their relation to the external world”
2. What is an ecosystem? “Study of different organisms acting together and their relation
with the abiotic (non living world).
Species
Population
Community
Ecosystem
3. Are ecosystems static or dynamic? How?
4. How does the concept of ecosystem relate to the romantic movement?
5. How does it relate to the ideas of Emerson or Thoreau? Term didn’t exist then.
6. Are humans part of the ecosystem?
Author mentions many things that threaten ecology.
7. What are some of these threats?
8. What is biodiversity?
9. What taxa is the most diverse?
Classical Ecology
10. Clements believed in a climax successional community, what does that mean?
11. Gleason had a different view, what was it and how did it differ from Clements?
Tansley, (1935) introduced the concept of ecosystem, which included the concept of the
biome.
Had three principles 1) a hierarchy of physical systems
2) a tendency towards relatively stable states of equilibrium
3) interconnection between organisms and their environment
1942. Charles Elton introduced the concept of a food web.
12. What is a food web?
13. Give an example of a food web?
14. What law of physics does the food web incorporate?
Important because ecology is becoming a real science based on other laws of science.
15. What was Leopold’s Land Ethic?
16. What was Leopold’s background?
17. Would Leopold agree that conservation and commodity go hand in hand?
18. Eugene Odum wrote Fundamentals of Ecology in 1953, but Pena says his greatest
contribution was that of homeostasis. What is homeostasis in ecology?
19. What does homeostasis have to do with environmental protection?
20. What was one critique of Odum’s work? (Too mechanistic)
Discussion Questions from page 14 and 15.