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17 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What puts a limitation on energy flow through our ecosystem?
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We lose energy on every transfer of energy, therefore decreasing amount of useable energy available.
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What is secondary production?
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Amount of chemical energy in consumer's food that is converted ot their own new biomass during a given period of time.
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Why does the squirrel have a less growth and reproduction energy consumption than a caterpillar?
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Squirrels are endotherms, lose lots of heat to the environment
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What can the earth's energy budget support more?
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More herbivores than carnivores. If you eat less meat, you are decreasing your carbon footprint.
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What is unique about aquatic systems and their biomass?
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Consumers is often higher than the producers.
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Phytoplankton
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Reproduction is very high, but death rate is also very high.
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What is the sea floor like?
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Covered in "marine snow" that has organic material that has sunk to the bottom.
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Food web indirect effects
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Change one component in a food chain can have rippl effects on all other components.
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What are tropic cascades?
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Predator in a food web suppress abundance of their prey, releasing the lower trophic level from predation.
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Urchins
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Good - hide in crevices & feed on drifting fragments. Food is plentiful, forest intact. Bad - Fods is limiting, form roving bands and eat all the kelp & prevent it from recolonizing.
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What animal controls urchin population?
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Sea otters
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What has happened to the population of sea otters?
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A switch in predation patterns from killer whales.
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Killer whales effect on sea otter population
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It is possible that only a few killer whales have made a profound change in sea otter population - causing a huge decline in sea otters
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Removal of Apex Predators - Indirect Effect (Sharks)
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Over-fishing of shark has an effect on scallop population - cut off their fins and throw sharks back into the ocean and they die. More rays are staying alive and more scallops are being eaten.
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What has the shark example done to scallop industries?
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Closed them down.
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Indirect effect - Masting
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Reproductive pattern in which an entire population of organisms reproduce at once. Impose a satiation-starvation cycle on seed predators. Masting of dominant plants can have very significant indirect effects throughout local food webs.
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Bamboo masting
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Causing famine in human populations - Every 48 years, it masts across its range; produces vast amounts of high quality seeds that fuels an explosion in forest rat populations. When seeds are gone, these rats take out crops.
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