The Value of Biodiversity Flashcards
(35 cards)
Biodiversity is a broad term used to describe?
the diversity of genes, species, and ecosystems in a region
What is extinction?
the death of a species, the elimination of all the individuals of a particular kind
How is biodiversity lost?
when all the individuals of a particular kind die off. When a species becomes extinct, biodiversity will go down.
What does genetic biodiversity include?
mutations, sexual reproduction, and population size
Note: individuals do not evolve, populations evolve because the genes can flow, produce
what does species biodiversity include?
species richness, taxonomic richness, and species evenness.
What does ecosystem biodiversity include?
the larger areas such as the desert, rainforests, grasslands, etc
What are some of the ecological roles played by organisms?
things we enjoy such as water, temperature, rain gives rise to the types of plants; plants support the animals that live there. There are different activities happening in nature, indirectly or directly.
What are some economic values of Biodiversity?
includes the materials that we use, clothes, food, shelter, and medicine.
Note: 50% of prescription drugs are actually derived from wild products
What are some ethical considerations of the value of biodiversity?
We should respect everything that is alive. If we all have a right to live, then this should extend to other species on earth, whether it is a plant or an animal. We have no right to deprive them of that reason.
We are losing many 100’s of species each year due to which threats to biodiversity?
(1) Habitat loss and fragmentation
(2) Burning of Amazon tropical forest
(3) Degradation of forests and from clear-cut logging
(4) Overexploitation
What is habitat fragmentation?
habitat loss results in the division of large, continuous habitats into smaller, more isolated remnants.
Examples: Breaking up of one patch of habitat into several smaller patches; Decrease in the average size of each patch of habitat
How does degradation occur from Clear-cut Logging?
a wilderness has been destroyed due to most or all trees in an area being uniformly cut down
How does degradation of Forests occur?
Burning the forest and planting crops. The old growth forest is replaced with agriculture, grazing, and farming.This is how the land is lost, not just by clear-cut alone but by development.
What are the 6 primary causes of the destruction of tropical forests?
- not valuing ecological services
- exports
- government policies
- poverty
- population growth
- roads
What are the 10 secondary causes of the destruction of tropical forests?
- oil drilling
- mining
- flooding of dams
- tree plantations
- cattle ranching
- cash crops
- settler farming
- fires
- logging
- roads
What is overexploitation?
harvesting a renewable (or natural) resource to the point of diminishing returns, can lead to the destruction of the resource.
Who discovered the passenger pigeons, and when?
John James Audubon in 1813
What are passenger pigeons?
because they tasted like chicken and were very easy to catch, they sewed eyelids together and tied legs to the tree so thousands of passenger pigeons crowded the whole tree; they were captured in the thousands.
Gray wolves
they were all over the place in North America, but by the 1930’s they reduced in number. A lot of animals needed to be protected from the gray wolves, such as deer and farm animals. However, when the wolf numbers went down, a number of other species were affected. The wolves had helped keep other numbers down. Without the wolves, we have more deer, moose, etc. They end up feeding on the vegetation, and the vegetation gets affected. One species could change the ecosystem drastically.
Example: Yellowstone National Park (1995) the wolves were re-introduced, the ecosystems were regenerated because the wolves have come back.
Note: Alaska has the largest number of wolves.
Orangutans
- Means “the people of the forests”’
- they are endangered species, almost wiped out completely.
- They can be found in the islands of borneo and sumatra.
- Deforestations in indonesia and malaysia has almost driven them to extinctio.
What are endemic species?
native species that are found in a particular area
What are exotic species?
species that are introduced, and are not from that area.
Examples: Kudzu, Sparrows, Zebra Mussels
What is the House Sparrow?
- also called “Passer domesticas”
- an introduced exotic species
- people complained about the sparrows, because it costs millions of tax dollars because of the clean up.
What is Kudzu?
- from Japan (early 1900’s, after depression)
- they are plants brought to grow fast.
- also has medicinal value, goats can eat them.
- “a mile a minute” or “Pueraria lobata”
- road engineers wanted plants that were good for them, but the roots are massive and becomes a major problem
