Compare the pictures, discuss in group of 2 or 3 and answer the following questions along with your names.
1.What causes these two biological communities so differently?
2.Is plant productivity higher in species-rich ecosystems? Why?
3. Does species richness enhance the sustainability of an ecosystem? why?
Kayla Locke and Lorraine Rudd
ReplyDelete1.One is aqautic and the other is terrestrial.
2. Yes, but levels of evenness and species diversity are variables.
3. Yes, because studies have examined possible variation in species richness within communities may influence productivity, leading to alterations in species number to the addition of productive speies.
Jordan Potter and Jessica Hartline
ReplyDelete1. The latitudinal gradients of species richness may be result from the energy available to the ecosystems. At lower latitudes, there are higher amounts of energy available because of more solar radiation, more resources (for example, minerals and water); as a result, even higher levels of species richness can be allowed at lower latitudes
2. The more diverse an ecosystem , the more productive it will be. That is, with a greater variety of producer species, an ecosystem will produce more plant biomass, which in turn will support a greater variety of consumer species.
3. The greater the species richness and the accompaning web of feeding and biotic interactions in an ecosystem, the greater its sustainability.
Jannie Jackson, Derika Grosser, Jeremy Norris
ReplyDelete1) The species diveristy is higher in the tropics and it declines as it moves from the equator towards the poles. It varies because of its geographical location.
2) Yes, species-rich ecosystems are more productive and sustainable.
3)Yes, the more species richness they have the better they are against any negative catastrophe. As long as the species richness is accompanied by a web of feeding and biotic interactions in an ecosystem, the greater the sustainability.
Brittney Franklin & Elizabeth Stamey
ReplyDelete1. The position of the environment compared to the equator which cause climate and temperature differences. The type and amount of water supply. Type of animals that live in the habitat.
2. It really depends on the area and the type of animals. If there are a large number of omnivors and herbavours then the environment may suffer and not be able to produce the necessary amount of grazing material. But if the enviroment has enough preditiors to keep the number of consumers down then the ecosystem will surly thrieve.
3. If there was a large number of herbavors grazing on the plant life, it would remove nutrients from the ground making it harder for plant sustainability. This in return can cause soil erosion and overpopulation of certain species of animals.
1. Alberta has a dry continental climate with warm summers and cold winters. The province is open to cold arctic weather systems from the north, which often produce extremely cold conditions in winter.Paradoxically, coral reefs flourish even though they are surrounded by ocean waters that provide few nutrients. They are most commonly found at shallow depths in tropical waters, particularly in the Pacific Ocean, but deep water and cold water corals also exist on smaller scales.
ReplyDelete2. Yes, because the more species a plot has, the more "biomass," or plant material, it produces and the better it retains nitrogen, its most crucial nutrient.
3. Species diversity should enhance productivity whenever species use resources in complementary ways, i.e., each species can use resources that others cannot so that total resource use by all species is greater than that of any individual species. I hypothesize that some species interactions, such as competition for space, prohibit complementarity from being expressed. If this is true, species richness may not always enhance productivity.
1. The position from the equator is an indicator of species richness, so the coral reef would be closer to the equator than alberta, canada because the closer to the equator, the more species richness.
ReplyDelete2. Yes because species richness areas produce more biomass than areas with fewer species.
3. Yes. Species richness provides more protection against catastrophes, produces biomass more consistantly, is less affected by drought, and more resistant to invasions of new species.
Megan Chandler, Stephanie Dalton, Regina Countess
ReplyDelete1. The coral reef is found in warm Pacific climates and are often called “rainforests of the sea”, coral reefs form some of the most diverse ecosystems on earth. They occupy less than one tenth of one percent of the world ocean surface, about half the area of France, yet they provide a home for twenty-five percent of all marine species, including fish, molluscs, echinoderms and sponges. The temperature of this ecosystem is fairly constant.
Alberta Canada has a dry continental climate with warm summers and cold winters. The province is open to cold arctic weather systems from the north, which often produce extremely cold conditions in winter. As the fronts between the air masses shift north and south across Alberta, temperature can change rapidly.
2.Yes. The more diverse an ecosystem, the more productive and efficient it will be with more complete use of resources, alternative species succeeding under varying conditions, etc.
3. No. The model we researched shows that plant species richness does not necessarily enhance ecosystem processes but it identifies two types of factors that could generate such an effect. These factors are complimentarity among species in the space they occupy below ground and positive correlation between mean resource - use intensity and diversity.