Ecology Culminating Research Paper

The connection The Good Food Revolution tries to also make is between ecology and human development. Ecology is about dealing with relations of organisms to one another

Leopold’s land pyramid describes the hierarchical dynamics of the biotic community. Based upon what we learned in class, a biotic community is the relationship between soil and animals. It is a sum of all the parts within the community. The pyramid represents layers within the biotic community. The bottom layer is the soil. A plant layer rests upon the soil layer, an insect layer lies atop the plants, a bird and rodent layer rests upon the insects. The pyramid works its way up the various animal groups until it finally comes to the peak layer, which consists of the lager carnivorous animals. Leopold places humans in the top layer.

Ecosystems can be impacted by many factors such as climate, natural disasters, human pollution, water shortage etc. All of these are the factors that controls an ecosystem’s stability, productivity, and sustainability because these factors can kill, drive out, intoxicate, and destroy species’ natural habitats. These factors are spontaneous and temporarily and these can impact a very specific species which in turn can cause the collapse of an entire species. These species are call the Keystone species and they are organisms that are basically the arch or the support of the food chain in an ecosystem. They are special because without them, the population will be impacted negatively, such as too much overgrazing, overpopulation, and lack of food or predators for some animals. Keystone species are important

Leopold does not believe that humans are the inferior species, the "conquerors of the land" as he puts it. Instead, he argues, humans are just "plain citizens" who simply share the planet with millions of other species and who are a part of an intricate and sophisticated system that makes life possible for all living beings. Nonetheless, he believes that in order for people to realize this, and for them to recognize nature as valuable and worth loving, they must be able to envision it as a tangible object. To make this possible, Leopold creates the idea of ‘The Land Pyramid,' whose purpose is to create a mental image of the environment as a complex biotic mechanism. The food pyramid is comprised of many layers. The bottom layer is the widest because it represents the species that are most abundant such as

Elton also figured out that a large number of plants is needed to supply a smaller number of plant eating animals. Such animals, in turn, provide food for an even smaller number of meat-eating creatures. He called this natural system of food relationships a “pyramid of numbers.” His contributions have made things better because we can use this “pyramid of numbers”

Every ecosystem has atleast one keystone predator that aids in the structure of the trophic levels population. The rocky intertidal is used as a famous example of a top predator controlling the lower trophic level population. The goal for this study is to establish the natural abundance of species and to examine the affects of predation on the different species located in the ecosystem. It was hypothesized that the sea star, whelk, and chiton have a impact on the population of lower trophic levels. A simulation was ran in the rocky intertidal zone removing the top predators. Sea star Pisaster ochraceus, chiton Katharina, and whelk Nucella was removed from the ecosystem and all the species in the ecosystem population was recorded for week eight

Charles Marshall’s article “How Stable Are Food Webs During Mass Extinctions?” reflects on the current “human-driven mass extinction” occurring today (Marshall). Researchers are wondering what will happen to the food web after the mass extinction humans are creating occurs and finishes. To find out the effects that may occur, Marshall brings up the subject of prehistoric food webs and the changes brought upon them from mass extinctions.

There are various ecological concepts that are to be taught within the scope of the Advanced Placement (AP) Biology course according to the curriculum framework developed by College Board. Students investigate concepts pertaining to the hierarchy of ecology, animal behaviors and interactions, population distributions along with associated hypotheses concerning those distributions, and the cycling of matter and the flow of energy within the environment. The AP Biology course requires students to not only be able to describe these basic ecological concepts but also be able to improve their own skills of critically analyzing these accepted trends or explanations. One of the concepts that students tend to simply accept and apply is the trend associated with predator-prey relationships. Students learn that there an increase in a the number of individuals within a predator-species increases as a result of an increase in the number of individuals within a prey-species

Apex predators are capable of directly and indirectly influencing the function of their environments by generating trophic cascades in response to their addition, or removal, from an ecosystem. Apex predators can alter the behavior and abundance of other animal species, as well as influence the productivity and diversity of plant species within their ecosystems. A trophic cascade can be referred to as the presence, or lack thereof, of an apex predator that directly affects lower trophic level consumers (e.g. herbivores) and thereby indirectly alters producer (i.e. plant) abundance or distribution. Trophic cascades have been recognized in all of Earth’s major biomes, especially in aquatic and insect filled systems.

An example of a trophic interaction includes parasitism, which is a relationship that involves a harmful organism living on another organism, and is presented by the galls (“plant tumours”) on the Grey Mangrove. The formation of a gall is initiated when an insect feeds on a plant or dominates the tissue of a plant and lays eggs there. The eggs will grow within the leaves, which they will eventually devour. These abnormal growths of plant tissue are a response to irritation or harm of the plant and it may slow down the photosynthesis process and may make the Grey Mangrove die.

In this paper I will be doing a case study on food webs, I will explain competition, boxicity, and trophic status. I will also explain how food webs are applied to discrete mathematics and real world situation. Food web is an important ecological concept that signifies the feeding relationships within a community. It is an instrument that is use for examining the interactions within an ecological system that shows energy flows. It also shows the predator to prey relationship, for example carnivores or omnivores preying on the herbivores. The energy flow in the food web flows to herbivores which are the primary consumers, from herbivores to the carnivores’ second consumers. Discrete mathematics illustrates the food web through a graph who vertices represents the species in the community. In the graph of a food web, each species in a

To get an understanding, Global warming is when the earth’s temperatures rise more than average causing drastic weather and climate change. It all began during the industrial era in the early 1800s where fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas became the primary source of energy. Since then many people had soon discovered that fossil fuels have improved their way of life, therefore the use and demand for fuel has been on the rise. In the United States it 's self currently provides more than 85 percent of all the energy consumption – that’s nearly two-thirds of our electricity (Ronnie D. Lankford)! Even though many people argue that these fossil fuels have improved our standards of life, such as providing us with electricity that light up our homes, or fuel that gets our cars running, taking us from point A to B. Yes, these are great luxuries to have but these fossil fuels add carbon dioxide to the Earth 's atmosphere, which is harmful to the environment as well as the well being on this earth (Ronnie D. Lankford). This can then be seen as a problem made by human activity. The questions that are to be explored are; How is global warming caused and the effects? How it can be prevented or stabilized?

According to the EPA, global warming refers to the recent and ongoing increase in the average global temperature (EPA). This increase is mostly caused by the amassed amounts of greenhouse gases or CO2 in the atmosphere. The CO2 or greenhouse gases get trapped within the atmosphere. Some CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t a bad thing; it allows for heat and sunlight to travel to Earth and helps keep Earth from going into a deep freeze period. But we can have too much CO2! If there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere, Earth heats up considerably over time, along with a plethora of other adverse effects. For many, a warmer temperature is welcome, but some do not realize the negative effects such warming will

Global warming is what happens when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth out towards space. Carbon dioxide, methane, and greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere keep heat from escaping. As a result of global warming, the Earth endures extreme weather events, a hazardous rise in sea levels, and life-threatening shifts in the world 's ecosystem.

Essentially, the effects and total resource needs of human society were extremely small for most of human history. Nevertheless, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, society has been growing in size and technological power, causing an ever-growing impact on the biosphere, to the point that the ecosystems services that society depends on are being degraded in ways that cannot be sustained (Robert et al., 2012). This study demonstrates this sustainability challenge with a funnel metaphor (Figure 1.1).