Conservation Study Guide 1 Study questions lecture 1 1 Describe the transcendental romantic conservation and evolutionary ecological land ethics and mention at least one person important in developing each idea ture Romantic Transcendental ethic nature has a spiritual value i e as a creation of god Emerson Thoreau Muir Resource Utilization nature has an economic value and resources should be used so that fu generations can also use them Pinchot Wise Use Evolutionary Ecological land ethic begins the development of ecology and evolution as scholarly disciplines which demonstrated that nature was not a simple collection of independent parts but a complicated in integrated system of interdependent processes and components Leopold Carson 2 What was the first national park and when was it founded What was the first nongovernmental environmental organization and when was it founded our first national park was created at Yellowstone in 1872 due to president Roosevelt and the railroad companies wanting to promote tourism national parks are an idea of the United States and this is where conservation biology was born In 1892 Muir made the Sierra Club first conservation NGO 3 Take a look at the web site of at least one conservation NGO Which of the three ethics seems closest to this organization s philosophy How important does science seem to be in what they do Can you tell how much they use support science Sierra Club The first NGO which most closely relates to the romantic transcendental ethic stating that nature has a spiritual value The mission of the Sierra Club is to explore enjoy and protect the places of earth and to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth s ecosys tems and resources They also strive to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment and to use all lawful means to carry out these ob jectives In order to convince legislature to establish national parks the use of science must be used The club uses a variety of programs to support their reasons for conservation e g protect ing america s water the use of clean energy the negative effects of climate change in various habitats across the united states 4 In what two ways might overpopulation pose a threat to nature High human population puts heavy demands on earths space and resources It leads to natural re source depletion like water oil wood and minerals Also land use for food production limits habitats natural Conservation Study Guide 2 Study questions lecture 2 1 development of Conservation Biology What does the title of the book Silent Spring refer to and why was this book important for the Rachel Carson message of the dangers of DDT DDT goes into the water picked up by zooplankton into the fish birds egg shells are very thin causing population problems amongst birds A lot of DDT is taken up by birds even though there wasn t that much put in the water biomagnefication started the environmental movement Rachel Carson synthesized knowledge of the effects of pollutants on the environment into a sin gle image that everyone scientists and the general public alike could understand With this book conservation biology was able to enter the political mainstream agenda 2 Three characteristics of conservation biology are that it is an inexact science that it deals with long time scales and that it is values laden For one of these characteristics explain why it makes it challenging to use the science of conservation to inform policy decisions inexact science The nature of ecological systems is complex and filled with variability Un certainty is a part of ecology and conservation and probalostic rather than prescriptive answers to problems that are the norm Conservation biology scientists rely largely on quantitative ap proaches but this can usually result in a credibility gap because ecosystems are so incredibly complex value laden Science is value free Objectivity can not be compromised or credibility will be lost should scientists lend their expertise to a debate 3 Consider the following table shown in class We will start class on Friday by discussing these questions so bring your answers to class a Describe one conclusion you can draw from this table the same as things we discussed in class or different Explain exactly what about the table supports your conclusion b Give one hypothesis for why the numbers in the last column are generally larger than the num bers in the second to last column Conservation Study Guide 3 Study questions lecture 3 1 Under what conditions would scientists use the Morphological Species concept as opposed to the Biological or Cladistic Species concepts when measuring biodiversity Name some pro s and con s of using the morphospecies approach Morphological Species Concept whatever fits a particular description is this species e g Saturnalia magna and Saturnalia neglecta look the same but have differ ent behavioral mating patterns and do not interbreed Biological Species Concept species are groups that are reproductively isolated from each other don t mate and produce successful offspring Cladistic Species Concept every group of populations that is distinct from other groups by a common character monophylectic group is a species One tree with mitochondria DNA gives one tree while others give you another tree At what level of difference is there a subpopulation or a new species 2 What are some sub species units of classification that are used in conservation biology Why would we need sub species units why not stop at species Evolutionary significant units ESU s a group of organisms genetically isolated enough to have diverged genetically from other groups of the same species Conservation Study Guide 4 Management units MUs local populations that have evolved genetic differences due to low dispersal among them like ESU s but smaller Distinct Population Segments DPS similar to ESU or MU but can be based on political rather than biological boundaries The use of subspecies is useful and illuminating They are not independent evolutionary units but are the products of evolution and are recognizably different taxonomic entities They are very useful in the studies of geographic variation among a widely distributed species They are needed to distinct geographic segments of species even if they are phylogenetically incompe tent 3 calculate richness and evenness Which would be easier to measure Define species richness and species evenness Explain