Biodiversity and conservation worth

Question 1

Documentation of biological diversity is one of the _______ sciences

Answer 1

oldest

Question 2

We are killing species at what rate

Answer 2

1000 times the natural rate

–> background extinction rate is estimated as 0.1 to 1.0 species per million go extinct each year

Question 3

What is the problem in documenting biological diversity

Answer 3

Training in systematics, and natural history in general,
continues to decline.

Question 4

What are some projects aiming to document diversity

Answer 4

• encyclopedia of life EOL (aiming to centralize
  information about all
  known species)
• barcode of life (iBOL) (International Barcode of
  Life Consortium.
  DNA barcoding, aiming
  to speed up identification)
• Global Biodiversity
  Information Facility, GBIF (aiming to centralize information about all museum specimens)
• University of Alberta Museums
  Search Site
  (Strickland Museum of Entomology
  Museum specimen label data access
  and species pages)

Question 5

Limited resources mean conservation efforts must be

Answer 5

prioritized d

Question 6

Biomimetics or biomimicry

Answer 6

is the imitation of
the models, systems, and elements of nature
for the purpose of solving complex human
problems.

Question 7

What are keystone species

Answer 7

Species that have a
disproportionately large
effect on other species in a
community.
e.g. large herbivore browsers
maintain high plant diversity;
or top carnivores regulate
population fluctuations in prey
Or mammoths!

Question 8

What are indicator species

Answer 8

Species whose status provides information on the overall condition of
the ecosystem and of other species in that ecosystem.

Question 9

cool factor

Answer 9

Species that have rare attributes, not found in other
members of their group: ‘cool factor

Question 10

What are living fossils

Answer 10

strict definition: extant representative of a group previously thought to be extinct
loose definition: primitive surviving lineage not necessarily known from the fossil lineage

Question 11

What did Crozier say for information content

Answer 11

crozier advocated assessing conservation worth on the basis of information content or genetic diversity of species

Question 12

So perhaps conservation should focus on species with

Answer 12

high genetic information content, or long a distinct evolutionary histories
ex. EDGE project

Question 13

Within the framework of information content, what are the ways to rank species

Answer 13

1. Total DNA
2. Tree shape as the criterion
3. Phylogenetic diversity (PD) values

Question 14

Describe total DNA as a way to rank species

Answer 14

• species that would be favored are generally closely related.
• we’d save all of the mammals and amoebas and not much else
• even if we could save them they would not form a viable assemblage in the long term
• prokaryotes have much less DNA than eukaryotes

Question 15

describe tree shape as the criterion to rank species

Answer 15

Bush-like = many branches
- Number of nodes separating species pairs.
- Effect: favours very diverse groups.
- Rationale: repositories of future variation.
Example: Rodents: many species; thus many
phylogenetic nodes separate most species pairs.

Or, take the opposite view:
Compare sister taxa for their number of species. Taxa with fewer species
are deemed more valuable because of the rarity of their features.
E.g.: Odobenidae = walruses (1) vs. Otariidae = sea lions & fur seals (17)

Long branches = rapidly evolving
Species that have changed a lot since their last
common ancestor with another living species might be
considered more important.

Question 16

Phylogenetic diversity values (PD) definition

Answer 16

PD is defined as the sum of the branch lengths of the sampled species in a
phylogenetic tree connecting all species known. It takes into account phylogenetic
differences among species and has been applied in various research fields.

For cladograms, PD is calculated as the
lengths of all branches that are members of
the corresponding minimum spanning path.

minimum spanning path =
minimum distance between
terminal nodes based
on number of internal nodes

the higher the PD the more that area maximizes the phylogenetic diversity of the species being preserved