Module 4

Lecture 23: Healthy Planet = Healthy People

What does biodiversity do for you?
- Biodiversity → clean air, clean water, healthy soils
- Essential to human survival, wellbeing and economic prosperity
- Human wellbeing is dependent on biodiversity benefits
- Varies across time
- Useful for food, ecosystems, grazing of native vegetation
- Most land used for agriculture is used for livestock grazing
- Ecosystems are interconnected
- Ecological communities & ecosystems have species interactions, dynamics and
flows (loss of a species has other consequences)
- Ecosystems of living organisms are intertwined with the physical environment
they inhabit
- Ecosystems are the basis for life → provide habitat, promote food chains and
webs and control ecological cycles and processes

Explore how a functional biosphere is needed for a strong economy

- Ecosystems as natural capital (large part of economy comes from natural environment)
- Land contributes to most environmental assets (compared to minerals and
energy)

- Having a functional biosphere is fundamental to all sustainable developmental goals

Explain Planetary Health and its significance

- Ecologists are the doctors for Earth
 - Record vital signs → diagnose problems, manage risks, monitor change → prescribe
treatments for remediation and restoration → advocate for ecosystem health

- Prevention is the most cost-effective strategy for public health

- The disruption and degradation of ecosystems can lead to irreversible collapse when key
defining features and functions of ecosystems are lost

Describe what role can you play in changing the future

- Become a citizen scientist and contribute to observations of nature

Lecture 24: Individuals, Behaviour & Environment

Understand links between morphology, physiology and behaviour
- Behaviour: part of how organisms respond to the biotic & abiotic environment
- The ways in which animals interact with and respond to the environment,
organisms and other members of their species
- Fundamental and affects fitness (an individual’s relative contribution to the next
generation’s gene pool)
- Coping mechanism = morphology + physiology + behaviour
- Example: Gelada baboon (Theropithecus gelada) foraging behaviour
- Morphology → teeth, guts
- Physiology → capacity to digest plant cell wall in grass
 - Social behaviour → group size, conflict between feeding, safet, mates
- Morphology: study of form and gross structure of organism and their specific structural
features
- Shape, texture, colour, pattern, size
- Both internal (anatomy) & external (outward appearance) morphology
- Physiology: study of interaction between biological systems and components work to
support life and grow

Appreciate ecological & evolutionary significance of behaviour

- Ecologically significant because it is a link between individual & their environment,
affects demographics & interactions among species
- Behavioural adaptations (evolution)
- Evolutionarily significant because it has some genetic basis, affects fitness and can be
selected
- Increased survival & reproduction (genetic differences which lead to behavioural
differences may increase reproductive success amongst an organism)

Understand various behavioural strategies to obtain food and avoid being food
- Foraging strategies are linked with morphology & physiology
- Foraging strategies are defined by:
- What they eat: herbivore, omnivore, carnivore
- How they get it: ambush (camouflage) vs active (agile, fast)
- Diet breadth: specialist → generalist
- Foraging is not random (individuals make conscious, foraging choices)
- Optimal foraging theory
- Focuses on efficiency of energy gain
- Modelled in which food supply will be unchanged, a non-depleting environment
- Allow foragers to maximise their energy intake from the same environment
- Net rate of food = energy
- Anti-predator strategies:
- Run away
- Group together (fend off attackers)
- Grouping together means there might be competition
- Hide (e.g. crypsis, stick insect)
- Act costly → act dangerous, mimic unpalatable or toxic organisms
- Be costly → have spines, toxins
- Feed in safe places or times → use moon/vegetation cover
- Feeding near vegetation sites for cover may make them miss other places
with food

Understand strategies used in reproductive behaviour

- Courtship/mating behaviour is non-random
- Relevant to sexual behaviour
- Involves: male-male competition & female choice
 - Sexual selection
- Intrasexual selection → competition (often male-male) → sexual dimorphism
(hefty vs slight)
- Intersexual selection → mate choice (often by female) → sexual dimorphism
(flashy vs plain)
- Parental care
- For parental care to evolve: benefits > costs
- Benefits: increased survival & growth of offspring
- Costs: missed opportunities to reproduce again
- Is having kids around worth it for the parents?
- Offspring stay and help parents rear more offspring (in some species)

Understand whether behaviour is something only animals do

- All living organisms behave and don’t always need a brain to make survival decisions
- All organisms will respond in a way to maximise their fitness
- Plant behaviour is different because they have different time frame and way of moving
- Plants slowly move parts of themselves
- Grow towards light/nutrients and respond to environment by moving

Appreciate the science behind our knowledge and understanding of behaviour

- Involves stimulus: response
- Interaction with environment (abiotice & biotic)

Lecture 25: Groups & Populations

Groups Population

- Can be different species - One species

- Multiple organisms of same/different - A number of organisms of the same
species occupying a common space species in a defined geographical
- Can be ephemeral/consistent area
- Can be: - Composition and structure are
- Social (postiive grouping) influence by life history, mobility and
- Indirect (sharing common habitat
resource) - Land and water
- Accidental (random chance) - Sessile and motile
Population biology:
- Understand temporal dynamics of population → how populations change over time
- Understand spatial distribution of populations → dispersal of population (??)

Be able to describe and understand exponential and logistic models of population

growth
- Populations change in numbers over time (can be +/- change)
- Populations may grow exponentially at first but as resources become limiting,
growth slows until they reach the carrying capacity
- Exponential growth → Rate (r) = change/unit time
 - Populations grow at different rates

- Logistic model → population growth is often resource limited

- Numbers cannot increase without bound
- When birth rate = death rate → population will be stable

Define instantaneous growth rates in discrete and continuous exponential growth

models
- Population growth rate: change in numbers of individuals over time
- Exponential growth → A population’s per capita growth remains the same irrespective of
pop size so populations grow faster as they get bigger
- Discrete → reproduction periodically (organisms living in seasonal environment,
breeding only 1x a year)
- Continuous → reproduction occurs year-round

- r = instantaneous growth rate

Become familiar with demographic rates and how they are measured
- Variables affecting changes in population size: births & deaths, emigration &
immigration, growth (individual), age at maturity, sex ratio
- “Closed” systems → no emigration or immigration
 - Nt+1 = Nt + Births – Deaths
-
- “Open” systems → individuals move in and out of the populations
- Nt+1 = Nt + Births - Deaths + Immigrants - Emigrants
- Estimating population size: Mark-releaserecapture (MRR)
- Estimates the total population size form a sample proportion of a mobile species
- Uses the proportion of recaptures to estimate whole population size
- Compare proportion of marked & unmarked over time

Understand what a stage/age structure model is

- Age and/or size of an individual affects:
- Probability of giving birth (fecundity)
- Survival
- Cannot apply same birth rate to every individual in a population
- Will be unrepresentative of natural population structure
- Age structure pyramid

- Estimate growth and age using rings (tree rings, rings in root), teeth
- age/stage structure of a population affects population growth

Understand what a spatially structured population is

- Populations of the same species which are scattered across various locations
- Metapopulations → local populations but individuals move
- Demographic rates vary spatially

- Large-scales dynamics dependent on local demographics and connectivity

Understand the principles and implementation of population viability analysis

- Population Viability Analysis (PVA) → used to model population dynamics over time
 - Used to understand effects of habitat loss, increased mortality rates, non-native
predators (e.g. foxes)
- Information needed:
- Population size/Carrying Capacity (K)
- Fecundity
- Mortality: Adults and juveniles
- Inter-annual variation in parameters

Lecture 26: Do Species Matter?

Understand the biological species concept, and others
- Biological species concept: groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural
populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups
- Most commonly used definition of what species are but many ‘species’ hybridise
- Genetic species → differ in genetic/DNA profile
- Ecological species → differ in ecology
- Phenetic species → defined on overall similarity

Is there a ‘species problem’, and do species matter?

- Species are real for most familiar organisms and continue to stimulate our thinking about
biological variation
- Species provide a convenient means of labeling different organisms
- Species are central to biodiversity conservation, species, genetic, community and
landscape are the most commonly accepted types of biodiversity
- May become less relevant as we improve ways to assess genetic variation, but species
will matter for the foreseeable future

How do we count the numbers of species in practice?

- Need to define an area in which to do our count
- Methods will differ for different organisms
- Count for large, conspicuous animals
- Traps for small, shy species
- Cameras/remote sensors
- Genetic method for cryptic species
- Time of day/season/weather conditions are all important considerations

Understand species richness, species diversity and how to estimate these quantities
- Species richness: number of species in a sample (S)
 - The more you sample, more of the same species is recorded and less of the
rarer species

- Species diversity: a measure of the number of species AND the numbers of individuals
of these species
- Example:
- Pond 1 = 100 insects, 10 individuals from 10 species
- Pond 2 = 100 insects, 91 individuals of one species and a single individual from
each of the remaining 9 species
- Pond 1: numbers more even so higher species diversity
- Types of diversity
- Alpha → number of species within a particular area/habitat
- Local diversity
- Beta → difference in species between areas/habitats
- Turnover diversity
- Gamma → number of species from all areas/habitats combined
- Regional diversity
How many species are there, and where do they occur?
- 1.5 - 1.82 million species described and have a name
- Estimate number of species to be discovered by extrapolating from current rates of
discovery

Appreciate the science behind our knowledge and understanding of species and their
behaviour
Lecture 27: Trophic Ecology
Review how organisms get their energy
- Autotrophs → producers, make their own energy
- Synthesise organic from inorganic compounds (CO2 and H2O using energy from
sunlight)
- Heterotrips → consumers, degraders, decomposers

Describe the concept of trophic levels

- Trophic cascade → arrows go down, top predators exert a dominant force that
structures the community from the top down
- Trophic cascades occur when predators limit the density and/or behaviour of
their prey and thereby enhance survival of the next lower trophic level
- Tertiary consumers (large carnivores) → secondary consumers (small carnivores) →
primary consumers (herbivores) → producers (plants)

Explain how energy flows within ecosystems

- The amount of energy passing through an ecosystem is determined by the net primary
productivity of the ecosystem
- Energy loss between trophic levels (as organisms grow & metabolise)
- Which is why food chains are short

- Longer food chains are unstable because fluctuations at low trophic levels magnify at
high levels
- Top predators are more likely to go extinct, downward food chain

Describe food chains and food webs (“eat or be eaten”)

- Food chains: describe energy flow between organisms among trophic levels
- Food webs: describe more complex interactions

Describe the various types of ecological interactions among species

- Ecological interactions: exchanges and flow of energy and matter within and between
trophic levels intimately linked with trophic ecology
- Mutualism [+, +] → 2 organisms in close association
- Obligate mutualism → symbiosis, can only survive together
- Facultative mutialism → gain benefit from associating but can survive alone
- Competition [-, -]
- Predation [+, -]
 - Herbivory, carnivory, parasitism
- Herbivory biggest interaction on the planet (important for individuals)
- Commensalism [+, 0]
- Amensalism [0, -]
- No interaction [0, 0]

Link ecological interactions to the flow of energy through trophic levels using herbivory
as an example

Appreciate the science behind ecological knowledge and understanding

Lecture 28: Assemblages and Ecosystems

Communities as definable entities; comparison with assemblages
- Communities: 2+ species that occur together in space and time
- Community members interact with each other as an ecological unit
- Assemblages: a group of species that live together with no assumptions made about
how/whether they interact with each other

Understand spatial and temporal changes in communities

Understand succession and resilience

- Succession
- Light unsuitable for certain species creates a high quality environment for other
species
- Changes in species composition and abundance, growth rates in lower canopy
and ground level strata
- Dominant species in system changes over time, new dominant species move in
- Types of succession:
- Primary → bare area without soil
- Secondary → in a habitat modified by other species (pre-existing
conditions)
- Models of succession:
 - Facilitation → early arriving species make environment more favourable
for later species (e.g. fixing nitrogen/nutrients)
- Tolerance → neither negative nor positive interactions between early and
late species
- Inhibition → early species inhibit later species

- Resilience: how long before a community returns to an “equilibrium” after disturbance

Role of disturbance in community structure

- Disturbance: a driver of species richness and community composition
- Intermediate disturbance → when disturbance levels are low competitive exclusion will
occur

Ecosystems and productivity – global and local cycles

- Ecosystems: the community of living organisms considered in conjunction with the
abiotic components of their environment, intearacting as a system
- Biogeochemical cycles → energy flows through the biosphere
- Ecosystem productivity is controlled by efficiency of recycling as well as by
energy available
- Global cycles → materials transported in the atmosphere (water, carbon, nitrogen,
sulphur)
- Water cycle

- Convection, precipitation, transpiration, respiration → move water around

- Water behaves more like energy because it effectively flows through and
is not recycled locally
- Nitrogen cycle

- Plants cannot absorb atmospheric nitrogen

- Absorbed as ammonium/nitrate after fixation of nitrogen by symbiotic
bacteria or in soil dilution
- Denitrifying bacteria convert nitrate back to gaseous nitrogen
- Electrical storms also fix nitrogen
- Nitrogen becomes limiting if microbial activity is inhibited
- Carbon cycle

- Most carbon is locked up in earth’s rocks as carbonate (and fossil fuels)

- CO2 is used in photosynthesis, released during respiration
- Large amounts are dissolved in the ocean
 - Burning fossil fuels returns CO2 to the atmosphere faster than it can be
cycled → contributes to global warming
- Local ecosystem cycles → phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium move
through soil
- Phosphorus cycle

- Essential to all life → in ATP

- Not common in earth’s crust/atmosphere
- Taken up by plants as phosphate from sparingly soluble soil storage pool
- Symbiosis between plant roots and mycorrhizal fungi enhances the
phosphorus supply

Case study - trophic cascades and carbon cycles

- Carbon cycle regulated by animals
- Sea otters and kelp forests
- Sea otter consumption of sea urchin limits kelp
- Sea otters drive very significant carbon storage
The science behind this ecological knowledge and understanding

Lecture 29: The Human Footprint

Review how human activities affect the ecology of natural systems
- Antropocene Epoch → used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when
human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and
ecosystems

Understand the impacts of pollution and how it affects the ecology of natural systems
- Toxic inputs → pesticides, chemical spills, plastics, nanoparticles, atmospheric pollution,
industrial accidents, manufacturing
- Silent spring (Rachel Carson 1962 book) → warned of synthetic chemicals accumulating
in mammals and birds
- Organisms were affected (bioaccumulation because they don’t break down
easily)
 - PCBs found in breast milk of mothers in southern Quebec
- Milk has 5x PCB levels compared to control
- Children born to women who ate PCB-contaminated fish
- The people eat every part of narwhal and beluga whales
- Toxins accumulate in certain body parts, particularly fat
- “Global distillation” & “global fractionation” → processes whereby volatile chemicals are
transported long distances
- Heavy usage in tropics, evaporate from soils and carried on winds, condense out
in cold as toxic snow
- Systematic transfer from warm to cold (very slow breakdown in colder climates)
- Pollutants lead to fitness declines in species that accumulate toxins

Understand how pollutants move into natural systems

- Bioaccumulation: when an organism absorbs a toxic substance at a rate greater than
that at which the substance is lost
- Accumulation occurs in body tissues
- Particularly in higher predators at the top of food chains and webs
- Pollutants have very long lives and some don’t break down at all
- Affects growth and development
- Examples:
- 2,4-D & 2,4,5-T → herbicides
- DDT, dieldrin, lindane → insecticides
- PCBs (chlorinated organic compounds) → very stable
- Heavy metals (mercury, lead, cadmium, etc.) → don’t break down

Understand the ecological impacts of habitat fragmentation

- Fragmentation affects fundamental ecosystem processes and the integrity of trophic
relationships
- Habitat loss is one of the major contributors to biodiversity loss
- Effects of fragmentation:
- Biomass collapse
- Irreversible shifts (ecological meltdown)
- Loss of predators results in ecological meltdown (evidence of a trophic
cascade)

Understand the ecological impacts of climate change

- Climate change is driving distinct signals of change in ecological systems that are linked
to massive changes in ecological relationships and the way that ecosystems function
- Animals & Plants
- Change in growing season length
- Abundance changes
- Morphology shifts (e.g. body & egg sizes)
- Hydrology and glaciers
- Glacier shrinkage
 - Permafrost thawing
Appreciate the science behind this ecological knowledge and understanding

Lecture 30: Conservation

The Extinction Crisis – effect of the human footprint
- Mass extinction events occurring
- Rate of extinction is 10-100,000 times higher than background rates

Paradigms (aims) for conservation biology

- To describe problems and understand processes
- To predict impacts of threats
- To develop solutions: undo the ‘human footprint’
- Ultimately stop more species/communities/ecological processes going extinct

The ‘Evil Quartet’ and ‘HIPPO’

- The “Evil Quartet” of extinction forces
- Alien species → more ‘alien’ species than native ones
- Over-hunting → humans over-exploiting wildlife
- Habitat loss → major cause of species extinctions
- Co-extinction → critical ecosystem functions are lost when species are lost
- “HIPPO” of extinction forces
- Habitat destruction
- Invasive species
- Pollution
- human over-Population → key difference and underpins everything else
- Over-harvesting
Predicting the future better – impacts and extinction risk
What can we do? restoration ecology
What can you do?

Lab Notes
Hypotonic vs Hypertonic
Osmosis
Normal Flora
PVA