ES 5: Biodiversity and Pop Dynamics 5/22/2018

Biodiversity and
Population
Dynamics!
The last topic! 

Topics under study

• Trophic relationships (Food Webs and Food Chains)
• Analyzing population sizes
• Analyzing communities and biodiversity of landmass

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Trophic Relationships
It’s a feeding frenzy out there!

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Trophic Relationships – Food Webs vs Food Chain

• Food Chain: one possible feeding relationship in an
ecosystem
• Food Web : all of the possible feeding relationships in an
ecosystem

Whether it is a chain or a web: producers are at the bottom,

consumers are at the top, and decomposers break down
everything

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Producers
• Autotrophs (make their own food) which use photosynthesis
to make glucose
• Plants (land)
• Algae, phytoplankton (water)

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Consumer
• Are all heterotrophs (eat others for food)
• Have different levels of consumers
• Primary = herbivores (eat producers)
• Secondary , tertiary, quaternary: omnivores and/or carnivores (eat
lower level consumers)

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Top Consumer
• Head of the food web in an ecosystem
• Always a carnivore (or omnivore)

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Decomposers
• Connect to all trophic levels as they feed on detritus (dead
organic matter)
• Bacteria, fungi, some insects

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Consumers

Primary Secondary
Producer
Consumers

Primary Secondary Tertiary

Producer

Consumers

Primary Secondary Tertiary Quaternary

Producer

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1. Draw a chain where there are four trophic levels.

Corn → Grasshopper → Frog → Eagle

Corn → Grasshopper → Rat → Eagle

Flower → Butterfly → Frog → Eagle

Mango → Fruit fly → Frog → Eagle
Mango → Fruit fly → Thrush → Eagle

2. Draw a chain where there are six trophic levels.

Mango → Fruit fly → Thrush → Wolf → Python → Eagle

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3. Name the top consumer: Eagle

Grasshopper,
4. Name all the herbivores Butterfly, Fruit fly

5. Name all the omnivores NONE

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6. In the chain of:

Corn → Grasshopper → Rat → Python → Eagle

a) Name the producer: Corn

b) Name the herbivore: Grasshopper

c) Name the carnivores (s): Rat, Python and

Eagle

d) Name the tertiary consumer: Python

e) How many trophic levels are in this chain? 5

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Analyzing
Populations
The “who’s who” in the environment

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Population
• Group of individuals of the same species, living in a shared
space at a specific point of time
• Can (and will) change from year to year
• Factors affecting population size:
1. Births (↑)
2. Deaths (↓)
3. Immigration: (↑) arrival of individuals from another population
4. Emigration: (↓) leaving of individuals from the population

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Population Size
Factors increasing the size > Factors decreasing the size
of a population of a population
Pop has increased

=
Pop is stable

<
Births and Pop has decreased Deaths and
Immigration Emigration

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Population distribution
Three main distributions
1. Clumped: members of a population stick together;
common for groups

2. Uniform: spread out evenly. Seen more in plant life

3. Random: no apparent pattern.

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Population distribution
Clumped Uniform Random

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Factors affecting populations

Main type of factors affecting populations:
Abiotic: Factors caused by non-living entities.
• Precipitation, heat, light, etc.

Biotic: Factors caused by living entities

• Predation, disease, human interactions, etc.

Limiting: Either abiotic or biotic, causes a decrease in the

population (think limiting reagent in stoich!)

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Biodiversity
Def: How diverse a community is
Factors influencing a community’s biodiversity
• Number of different types of species (species richness)
• Size of the different populations (relative abundance)

The more biodiverse the community, the more species

richness, and the somewhat equal relative abundance of the
species which are found there.

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You have two communities; A and B. Compare

which community has a high level of biodiversity.
Community A Community B
Zooplankton 600 Zooplankton 548
Arctic Cod 180 Arctic Cod 214
Seal 80 Seal 64
Polar Bear 10 Polar Bear 26
Bowhead whale 4 Bowhead whale 0
Total number of Total number of
different species different species
Total number of Total number of
organisms organisms

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Measuring the size of a population and the robustness

of a community: LAB!
You’re task is to measure the size of a population by counting
the species in a sample area!

Then, you will figure out the population density!

Then, you will figure out how biologically diverse the

community is!

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