Large Mealworm

He further questions the efficiency of our practice of eating animals by providing the example-- only one quarter of the nutritional values from grains we feed to animals could be received during human consumption (178). Thus he concludes that our interests in consuming animals flesh are minor interests because they are neither for health nor for increasing food

They first had a controlled experiment with only food and observed their behavior for a week and a half. After that, they introduced a small board in the same area and observed the ravens’ behavior. At first, the ravens did not go near the board and it took about a month and a half to grow accustomed to the board. Once the ravens showed comfort to be near by the board, they began to add food of small and large sizes around the board and recorded the ravens’ behavior for two weeks. From there, they placed the food on the board and recorded the ravens’ behavior for another two weeks. There was a significant difference with the choices when the board was introduced. The board has changed their behavior to primarily choose the smaller pieces and the ravens that did choose the larger pieces had other ravens stealing their food instead of going to the board to get

Using prehistoric fossil records and devising these animals into guilds, either carnivores or herbivores, they made a food web for these extinct creatures. Roopnarine and Angielczyk are examples of the people who work on creating these food webs that Marshall uses in his article. These two people focus on the

These ants live on a small island surrounded by water where they prepare food for the arrival of a band of grasshoppers. Of the working ants, one of them that stands out is the inventor Flik. He is constantly inventing new things for the colony to try, but his ideas are often shot down. One day one of his ideas destroys the food that the colony has been collecting. So, when the grass hoppers come to the ant hill to collect their food and see that the food was gone they order the ants to make double the food for them before the start of the rainy season. Flik’s accident put all the ants of the colony in a difficult situation. Now they must pick more food at the risk of not having enough food for themselves ( Lasseter, J., Station, A. & Anderson, D.K., Reher, K., 1998).

Carnivores rely on hunting animals for food, thus their survival depends on their ability to catch their next meal. These carnivores often strive for the biggest prey, making food harder to attain and increasing the overall energetic demand. Hunting becomes a game of stealth, fear and maintaining energy levels (Brown et al. 1999). Two reports were done by Scantlebury et al. (Scantelbury et al. 2014) and Williams et al (Williams et al. 2014) and they looked at the delicate balance between the depletion and replenishment of energy in order to survive. The study found that pumas and cheetahs have different game strategies when it comes to hunting. Pumas prefer the sit and wait approach as they would rather let the prey come to them, while cheetahs

The results of this experiment supported (accepted) the hypothesis, that was “The mealworms will prefer the colder area because the worms are nocturnal.” Four out of the six mealworms went to the cold side of the container and stayed there for the whole 10 minutes, and only two out of the six mealworms went to the warm side. The reason for these results could be that since mealworms are nocturnal, darker areas must be cooler than lighter areas because light makes places warmer. So this means that mealworms prefer darker and colder environments better.

Large carnivores tend to possess certain features that make them particularly vulnerable to human disturbance, and consequently, reduced survival. One major characteristic of many species of large carnivores is that they require large home ranges. Populations of individuals or social groups that forage over wide areas are prone to decline as a result of habitat degradation or fragmentation by human activity (Textbook pg. 161). Animal species with large bodies also tend to have low reproductive rates, impeding the ability of their populations to recover following human disruption that reduces the population size (Textbook pg. 161). Furthermore, large carnivores generally need more food to survive than small-bodied animals. These nutritional requirements increase their vulnerability to human disturbance because a reduction in prey populations or habitat size could decrease hunting success and result in starvation (Textbook pg. 161). In addition, top carnivores are also frequently killed by humans for a variety of reasons, including for sport, because they compete with humans for wild game, or because they damage livestock (Textbook pg. 41, 161).

Preys have a more difficult role in the predator and prey dynamics as they have to expend energy in foraging for themselves as well as high predation risks. This also adds to the disequilibrium in the predator and prey relationship as prey’s need more expenditure of energy for both foraging and escaping. In a research study done by Luttbeg et al. (1999) looked at behavioral response to predation risk in a predator and prey dynamic model. When the spiders are not around the grasshoppers eat more and grow more. (Luttbeg et al., 1999 However, when predation risk was present this tended to cause reduced feeding activity in order to increase vigilance and predator awareness thus imposing a great life history cause (Luttbeg et al., 1999).). Therefore, predator prey dynamics is highly affected and requires equilibrium in the way the prey chooses to balance its trade offs of foraging and predatory risk. In order to maintain the equilibrium of the predator prey dynamic the prey must find way to maximize food intake and minimize predator

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

An organism’s fitness is largely determined by circumstance, if food becomes limited, an organism highly adapted to a single given food source will not fare as well as it does when food is plentiful. For such reason the natural world provides many examples of predators capable of gaining energy from multiple sources (Ardanuy, Albajes and Turlings, 2016; Sanders, Vogel and Knop, 2015; Smout et al., 2010; Xu et al., 2012; Clarke, 2010; Poysa, Jalava and Paasivaara, 2016). In predatory environments, species that are capable of surviving and thriving on multiple food sources are referred to as generalist predators, while those that feed only on a narrow range of prey are said to be specialist. In terms of predation efficiency predators of both types can be equally effective: specialist predators gain all the energy possible from a single source, while generalists likely gain less energy per individual meal but have a wider-niche and thus can eat more regularly. The outcome of which strategy has the highest efficiency will typically depend on the structure of the environment and population in which the predator exists. While predation is always prominent, it is never the only trait under selection. To stably maintain genetic and ecologic diversities organisms must commit trade-offs. Trade-offs occur when proficiency in one phenotypic trait is increased at the expense of another (Stearns, 1976).

Getting a little bit more complex, we can consider Holling's disc equation (Stephens and Krebs 1986) which can apply to any foraging animal. This equation's most simplified derivation is

Vultures are not the most beautiful birds but they play an important role in the balancing the ecosystem. People generally fear vultures since they are often associated with death. Over the years and into the modern culture they have received a bad reputation for scavenging and are generally misunderstood by people who label them as filthy because they know no better. In reality, although it seems strange to us, vultures play a vital part in the ecosystem by breaking down and cleaning up the carcasses that stink and would carry disease. Scavengers are as important as any other animal in a food chain. Vultures are the most significant scavengers in the ecosystem because they help in the easy disposal of dead and decaying carcasses protecting the environment and human lives at free cost. Without them, there would be dangerous diseases at large at community and decrease in sustainability in the environment. They can be even termed as “Natural Cleaners” of the ecosystem. Even though they are prime scavengers, they have very low fertility rate and it is very difficult to regain their previous population in the environment in the current declining status. Hence, over the past forty years, the unintentional digestion of the pain reliever Diclofenac has driven the disastrous drop in population of nature’s most successful scavenger and has led to an imbalance in the ecosystem.

Mealworms are usually kept in the fridge, the mealworms move very slowly to almost not moving at all. After its warming up, the mealworms start to wander around and climb onto each other. The mealworms that were in the glass were bunching up into pairs and one of the mealworms was all alone. The people in the group thought that the mealworms were getting together to warm up because the mealworms had just come out of the fridge. As soon as the mealworms were warming up, the mealworms started wandering around and standing up. On the backs, it looks very hard-shelled and are not afraid when the mealworms are touched. The mealworms looked tan or light brown so must have just shedded their dead skin off. When people look at them closely it looks like the mealworms do not have back legs but the people could not be so sure. In the

The lionfish as a species here in Florida waters are depleting its existing foods, being species such as gobies and snapper. Off the Florida Keys, “Nichols used to find shrimp and other small invertebrates in his lobster traps, but he has noticed a steep decline”. This man suspects that from their habits of overeating the only solution the lionfish have for a source of food is to result in cannibalism, an increase in cannibalism that could mean that there are so many lionfish that lionfish are controlling themselves (Buskey, Edward)

House crickets, Acheta domesticus are thought to be endemic to northwest Africa or southwest Asia (Weismann and Rentz 1977, Ghouri 1961). Currently this species has a near cosmopolitan distribution, and is typically associated with anthropogenic establishments. Females can be easily distinguished from males from their ovipositor, which allows them to lay eggs underground. Crickets are diet generalists and can feed on a variety of plants(revise). Currently there is little research on what effects hydration levels has on diet preference in crickets. If crickets are given a choice between kale and iceberg lettuce, crickets that are more dehydrated will visit iceberg lettuce over kale. Sex may play a factor in this as well. If sex has an effect on number of visits to kale and iceberg then we should see a difference in visits among males and females.