The reading listed in the syllabus are listed by chapter, but often there is more material covered in a chapter than I intend to cover in this course. You can use the question below to guide your reading and studying. Recall that one goal of the class is for you to learn to write clearly about ecological principles, and I won't forget to test you on your progress toward achieving this goal. One great way to practice your ability to write clearly about ecological principles is to write out the answers to these questions in essay form. Get a study partner or two to read your answers, and you read theirs and compare your essays to the grading rubric I will be using to assign points for test essays. You will find that you and a group of your peers can do a pretty good job of grading using the rubric, and typically a composite answer from several students will have everything you need to answer the question. If you doing well on these questions, and keep up and do them all, you will do well on in-class quizzes and the exams. Feel free to ask about any questions you don't think you are getting right--you can ask during office hours or on email, but I especially encourage you to ask at the being of class because it is likely that others will have similar questions and benefit by listening too.
Questions for weeks 1-3:
Imagine an individual young adult female fruit fly living in a forest in Arkansas. Describe some ways that a change in the environment could impact this individual (i.e., a change in climate due to global warming).
Now, imagine a population of fruit flies living in Arkansas. Describe some ways that a change in the environment could impact this population on an ecological time scale?
Now, describe how the species of fruit fly could be impacted on an evolutionary time scale.
Describe how a soapberry bugs could adapt through natural selection to a change in the size of the fruit they consume. Be sure to carefully describe everything I need to understand how this species would evolve (make sure to include a clear definition of evolution).
Chapter 8: 9
Chapter 2: 3, 5, 9, plus:
Describe the vegetation (i.e., biomes) you would see if you got in your car and headed east on I-40 until you reached the coast? What about if you headed west to the coast?
Chapter 4: 1,9,10 plus:
What are the advantages of being endothermic? What are the advantages of being ectothermic?
Chapter 6: 1, 4, plus:
Describe the major differences in plants and animals as food resources.
Chap 18: 2, 3, 4, 8 plus:
1. How much of the radiant energy that strikes the earth is converted by plants into the chemical compounds of carbon? What happens to the rest of it?
2. Discuss the factors responsible for the pattern of NPP in Oceans.
3. What are the major factors limiting NPP in terrestrial systems? How does each vary over the globe, and how do they account for the patterns of NPP in terrestrial systems?
Chap 19: 1, PLUS
1. Trace the pathway an atom of carbon in the cellulose of a dead oak leaf would have to take to end up in a glycogen molecule in your muscles.
2. Do the previous question over again, using an atom of nitrogen in the photosynthetic enzymes of the dead leaf.
Chap 9: 3 and 5 should review lab on dispersion
Exam 2
Chap 10: 3,
Chap 11: 1 (this question has 4 subquestions--only do parts 3 and 4), 4, 6, 10
Chap 13: 10
Chap 14: 4, 6
Chap 15: 1
Chap 12: 2, 3,
PLUS: 1. Explain how character displacement could occur. Use a real or imaginary example to explain how a specific case of character displacement came about.
2. What are the possible explanations for differences in the fundamental niches among a group of similar species? Use a real example from lecture or text to explain.
3. Make a figure of population numbers by time that represents a prey species and its primary predator. What role do refuges for the prey species play in determining the population size of the predator and prey? What are some examples of refuges for prey? What will happen in your graph in the absence of refuges?
Questions for Exam 3:
Chap 16: 1, 7, 8, 9, 10
Chap 17: 4, 5, 10
Chap 20: 1, 9, omit reading about mechanisms of succession on pages 462-467.
plus answer this question:
Which occurs faster, primary or secondary succession? Explain why.
Comprehensive questions to think about for the Final Exam:
1. Can you trace the movement of energy and matter through and ecosystem? Start by defining matter and energy, and then follow a carbon atom through two trophic levels--make a clear distinction between matter and energy. What about a nitrogen molecule? how does it differ from the carbon? how do humans alter these cycles? what happens when we alter the nitrogen cycle or the CO2 cycle? Of course, I assume that you know why I happen to pick nitrogen and carbon from out of the hundred plus elements of the periodic table.
2. Why are big fierce predatory animals rare?
3. What ultimately limits the carrying capacity for humans on earth? (and also, what complicates our capacity to estimate a carrying capacity for humans on earth?).
4. If you were made manager of a natural area in the Arkansas Ozarks, what factors would determine whether the reserve could support a population of mountain lions?
5. What's one factor that ties together all three of the questions (2,3,4) I asked above?
6. Think about the different levels in ecology; can you state three clear, specific, and testable hypothesis about honeysuckle at the nature preserve, one at the population level, one at the community level, and at the ecosystem level?
7. Competitive exclusion should result in reductions in diversity, but many communities are very diverse. Does that mean that competition is not occurring? How can competitive exclusion be prevented?