Bonine and Epps, ECOL 406R/506R, Fall 2009
Conservation Biology (ECOL 406/506)
24 October 2009
Suggested Review Topics for Second Midterm Exam
(Exam 2 is Thursday 29 October).
Please review your readings and lecture notes for material since the first midterm, through the “fire”
lecture on Tuesday 27 October. 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.
River Turtle Conservation, Tues 29 Sept, Ed Moll (Ch 7 of his book)
1. What is the biggest threat to Asian river turtles?
2. What selective force likely led to the thick shell bones in river turtles?
3. Many species of turtles are sexually dimorphic. Which sex is usually bigger? Why?
4. What is sexual dichromatism?
5. What is an estuary?
6. In 1900, how was the drummer population managed by the sultan?
7. What was the problem for turtles with the 1/3 hunter, 1/3 government, 1/3 recruitment plan of turtle-egg
conservation?
8. How could a human observer not see a population crash coming in a long-lived species like large river
turtles?
9. Which country is probably the biggest consumer of turtle products?
10. Other than the biggest threat you answered about above, can you list three other threats to river turtles?
11. Describe two pros and two cons to ex situ turtle-rearing strategies.
12. Why is marking of released captive bred turtles important?
13. What is an umbrella species? Is this different from a flagship species?
14. Did Dr. Moll advocate captive breeding programs as a productive conservation measure for the river
turtles? Why or why not?
15. How should we protect river turtles? Are there any success stories you can refer to?
16. Is turtle farming a solution to the global demand for turtle products? Why or why not?
17. What are the main points of Ch 7 of his book?
Invasive Species, Thurs 01 Oct (Primack 109-120 in Ch4, Thomas and Reid 2007)
18. Define an invasive species. How do species get from one place to another? Are these movements
“natural”?
19. What is the approximate economic impact of invasives? How does that value compare to the costs of
prevention and/or mitigation?
20. Explain the two parts of the “tens” rule.
21. Describe the characteristics of most invasive species and most invaded habitats. What is the general
difference between r- and K-selected species?
22. Are plants, insects, or animals bigger invasive threats? What about bacteria and viruses? What do we
know about the biology of these different taxa?
23. Why should we care about zebra mussels?
24. What invasive example has taken place on the island of Guam?
25. Can you name four invasive species in the Galapagos Islands?
26. What are four kinds of ecological impacts of invasives? Can you give an example of each?
27. How is the logistic growth curve a useful model for understanding the change in abundance or density
of invasives? What do Thomas and Reid say about the cost-benefit considerations of different rates of
invasion or ecosystem alteration?
28. Explain the biocontrol efforts in the US against Tamarisk. What are pros and cons of biocontrol efforts?
Are their biocontrol efforts that have gone awry? Why?
29. What do we know about the effect of biocontrol agents on ecosystems?
Bonine and Epps, ECOL 406R/506R, Fall 2009
Exploitation and other Threats, Thurs 01 Oct (Primack Ch4)
30. How does overexploitation of one species affect other species or even entire ecosystems? Can you
provide a few examples?
31. Define bycatch.
32. How does a TED (turtle-excluder device) work? How is their use enforced?
33. What is a Vaquita? Where does it live? What are threats to its continued existence?
34. How many great apes are alive on the planet today as compared to the number of humans born each
day?
35. Some human families on the planet spend less than $2/week on food, while others spend more than
$500/wk. What are the causes and implications of this disparity?
36. From your Ch4 reading, what are the main causes and consequences of biodiversity threats from
pollution?
Hawaiian Silverswords, Tues 06 Oct, Rob Robichaux (Silversword Article on Jane Goodall website)
37. What is adaptive radiation? Why does it occur rapidly on islands? What is the “founder effect”?
38. List 3 threats to the Hawaiian silverswords.
39. Explain “Preparing for Loihi.”
a. http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/HCV/loihi.html
b. http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanoes/loihi/
40. From what continent did the Hawaiian Silversword’s relatives originate?
41. How many native terrestrial mammals were in Hawaii before humans arrived?
42. Robichaux studied regulatory gene evolution in the Silverswords. Why are these genes a good place to
focus research attention?
43. What information can be inferred by studying the ratio of 1) mutations that alter the amino acid
composition of a protein to 2) the mutations that are silent (same amino acid coded for by
altered/different genes)?
44. What is monocarpic reproduction?
45. What do Robichaux and colleagues attempt to do with invasive ungulates in Silversword areas?
46. What was the problem with the captive propagation program that was undertaken for the Silverswords in
the 1970s, 80s, and 90s?
47. Why does Robichaux attempt to balance founder representation in his reintroduction work? Are there
potential pitfalls to this approach?
48. What has happened to the native birds in Hawaii?
49. How are many of the native plants pollinated? What has happened to those pollinators? Why?
50. Why won’t the silverswords recover without human intervention even if the invasive grazers are
removed?
51. Robichaux listed three large groups of organisms that are not native to Hawaii. Can you name two of
them?
52. Is the oldest Hawaiian island of Kauai about 500,000 years old, 5 million years old, or 5 billion years
old?
53. Do you think that Hawaii having 40% of the listed ESA species (threatened or endangered) but only
0.2% of the land area reflects realistic ratios of what species are in trouble and where (in the U.S.)?
54. Robichaux is inspired by the success of his work (and that of others); so much so that he said
“everything is still on the table”. What did he mean by this?
55. Who is Jane Goodall? Why did she write an article about Hawaiian Silverswords?
Threats to Biodiversity & Populations, Thurs 08 Oct, Tues 20 Oct, Thurs 22 Oct
(Walther et al.. 2002, Harper et al. 2008, Quammen [Song of the Dodo], Marmontel et al. 1997, Gilpin 1996,
Panther PVA, Primack Chs 5-6)
56. What are the five major threats to biodiversity? Do they often act in concert?
57. What is the evidence for global climate change?
58. Which part of the planet will heat up faster? What is expected to happen to Polar Bear populations?
59. How does understanding phenology help us comprehend the potential implications of climate change?
60. What are at least two different definitions of extinction?
61. How many great extinction events have there been in the history of the planet? Are we in the midst of
one right now? What happens to biodiversity in the 5+ million years following a massive extinction
event?
62. Draw and explain Rosenzweig’s three-step loss of biodiversity.
63. What was the objective of the Harper et al. reading? What were the main conclusions and
recommendations?
Bonine and Epps, ECOL 406R/506R, Fall 2009
64.
65.
66.
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68.
Why did frogs and salamanders differ in their habitat needs and extinction projections?
What is a life table? How does it represent demography?
Why do ecologists and conservation biologists generate models?
What are the implications of K?
Describe primary and secondary vulnerability characteristics associated with likelihood of extinction.
Can you think of examples that have multiple characteristics?
69. What are the implications for conservation that population sizes and distributions are dynamic? What
are the implications of most PhD theses relying on 4-5 years of data?
70. Describe five things that we can study that affect population sizes.
71. Explain the difference between exponential and logistic growth in 1) words, 2) graphically, and 3)
mathematically.
72. What is the Allee effect?
73. Explain how structured population models are more realistic than unstructured? How are sensitivity and
lambda useful for making conservation and management decisions?
74. What assumptions of these models do we know are wrong?
75. Why are some models useful even if all models are wrong?
76. Explain why life tables are useful.
77. Explain why stochasticity, acting on many different levels, is especially problematic for small
populations. What is genetic drift?
78. Explain the relationship between effective population size (how do you calculate?), bottlenecks, genetic
drift, and heterozygosity.
79. What is the typical relationship between the size of the effective population and the number of
individuals in the population?
80. What is the general concept behind extinction vortexes? How is positive feedback a relevant concept?
81. How can the H-W Equilibrium be used to assess aspects of population persistence?
82. What is PVA? What is it useful for? How do you do it? How do most predictions of population
persistence change as you project further and further into the future?
83. Why was a population of 48 parrots in Australia discussed in your short Gilpin reading?
84. Are manatees in trouble? Why? How do we increase their population in an ecologically meaningful
way?
85. How does the founder effect and adaptive radiation provide a counter argument to the difficulties facing
small populations? What percent of individuals that leave a mainland population end up 1) making it to
an island alive, and 2) establishing a new species?
86. Define inbreeding coefficient.
87. What does IUCN stand for?
Paradigms in Conservation Biology, Thurs 08 Oct and Tues 20 Oct (Primack Chs 5-6)
88. Where would most oceanic islands fit when considering island biogeography? What about continental
islands? Can you graph and explain a representation of the equilibrium theory of island biogeography
(ETIBG)?
89. What are two common ways that one population of a species becomes two isolated populations? How
is sea level relevant to this topic?
90. Explain plate tectonics and the relevance to biogeography.
91. To what conservation applications has ETIBG been applied? Are there caveats we should consider?
92. What are two important contributions of Alfred Russell Wallace to the general fields of ecology,
evolution, and biogeography?
93. Explain why some groups may disperse better than others? What does a typical graph of genetic
relatedness and geographic proximity look like?
94. Why are source and sink populations important to understand in conservation?
95. What has happened to the metapopulation dynamics of the lowland leopard frog in the Tucson area in
the last 110 years?
96. What roles do habitat heterogeneity and disturbance play in species richness?
97. How are endogenous and exogenous disturbances different? Is the distinction between these two
always clear?
98. Explain the intermediate disturbance hypothesis.
99. What is a metapopulation? How is it related to connectivity and ecosystem complexity?
100.
Why have extinction rates been higher on islands since 1500 than on mainlands?
Conservation Genetics, Tu&Th 13&15 Oct, Adrian Quijada-Mascarenas (Hedrick 2001, Murphy et al. 2007)
101.
What is meant by evolutionary potential?
Bonine and Epps, ECOL 406R/506R, Fall 2009
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What are three practical applications of conservation genetics?
What taxa does Adrian study?
Define evolution and provide four mechanisms that lead to it.
Why is genetic diversity important?
What is a locus? An allele?
How do nuclear genes differ from haploid genes in mitochondria or chloroplasts?
How do transitions and transversions differ? Which is more common? Why?
How do we measure genetic diversity?
What is a microsatellite? What are the pros and cons of their use?
What are six common uses of conservation genetics?
How do ESUs and MUs differ? Is this distinction important? Why?
How does knowledge of genetics relate to management of nurse shark populations?
What is meant by “population structure”?
What animal bit Adrian on the hand?
Define inbreeding depression.
What are the assumptions of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium? Are these assumptions realistic?
What is a bottleneck?
Can you calculate how heterozygosity is expected to change over time in a population? What
data do you need?
120.
Why might a gene tree and a species tree not be the same even if the gene is from those
species?
121.
What species have been the focus of wildlife forensics using genetics?
122.
Why might the distinction between genetics of adaptive traits and neutral genetic markers be
important in conservation?
Fire, Tues 27 Oct, Mary Jane Epps (Donovan & Brown 2007)
– Note that questions were posted here before her lecture and therefore may not be entirely appropriate.
123.
Why is knowledge of fire regime important?
124.
Compare fires in the last 100 years with fires before 1900. How did they differ?
125.
How do we know about fires from hundreds of years ago?
126.
What season has the most fires in the southwest US? When are most prescribed burns lit?
127.
How did the Big Blow Up affect fire suppression policy in the western US?
128.
How can fires differ? Do they contribute to ecosystem function and diversity? How?
129.
How are fire and invasive species linked?
130.
Give three examples of fire-adapted ecosystems. Give an example of an invasive species that
is altering fire regime.
131.
Name one species that has become endangered partly because of a changing fire regime. How
did this species use the historic fire regime to meet its needs?
132.
How have plants adapted to fire? Do some plants require fire?
133.
Explain a few pros and cons of fire suppression. Do the pros outweigh the cons?
134.
How does climate change influence fire regime?
135.
How did Donovan and Brown propose we manage fire? What tools or incentives would they
suggest employing?
136.
Compare the merits of fire suppression, prescribed burning, and thinning. Is one of these a
panacea?
137.
“There is no conscious dishonesty, but there is plenty of human nature” (SE White 1920). What
does this mean?
138.
Other important questions from the lecture that are not covered above?
139.
Suerte!
What are you planning to do for your creativity project later in the semester?