Lecture 2 Conservation

Question	Answer
Why SHOULD pandas be conserved?	Face of the WWF, helps fundraising, preserves rich biodiversity including plant, landscapes and other animals, spread bamboo seeds, facilitated growth of vegetation, stopping funding would condemn them and creates jobs in china.
why should we STOP funding pandas?	cost too much upkeep, little chance of living natural life as they are continuously checked up on, money spent on them could save many species with higher chance of survival.
What is Rivet popping?	If only one species disappears, the loss of the ecosystem's efficiency as a whole is relatively small; however if several species are lost, the system essentially collapses as an airplane wing would, were it to lose too many rivets.
Why can't we conserve every species everywhere?	Human have a growing population, so need land to live and grow crops as well as areas for business. This means that there isn't enough of the necessary space needed to conserve all animals.
What prevents the government funding conservation projects?	They only look at short term completion periods, 5 years long. They don't understand that conservation takes longer then that.
Although the public fund conservation, how do they limit what can be conserved?	Public only want to save the "cute and cuddly". Which mainly includes mammals and some birds. However 90% of animals comprise of insects, and a vast majority have yet to be identified and catalogued.
What is biodiversity?	it is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or an entire planet. Measures of the health of ecosystem in part a function of climate
What is this? Image: species_area_curve (image/png)	Species area curve
what is the Species area curve?	the relationship between the area of a habitat and the number of species found within that area.
On a species area curve, what do larger areas signify?	Larger areas tend to contain larger numbers of species, and empirically, the relative numbers seem to follow systematic mathematical relationships.
How is a approximate extinction rate determined?	The mirror image/ opposite reflexion of the species area curve.
What does SAR and EAR stand for?	Species area relationship and extinct area relationship
What happens to the SAR with increasing habitat area?	The SAR rises by one species unit each time the individual of a species new to the inventory is encountered.
What must occur for a species to be classified as extinct with a decreasing habitat?	with decreasing habitat area an extinction does not occur until the last individual of a species is encountered
The number of species predicted to go extinct from the species area curve have not gone extinct. Why is this?	The rate of extinction is not happening at the predicted pace, it will eventually happen given enough time without intervention assuming the reasons for its rate of decline continue. This is known as an extinction lag.
Why is it hard to know when species have gone extinct?	You may not have found the remaining member of that species.
What are hotspots?	Places that have concentrated biodiversity, conserve them to protect the species there. Becomes a priority for conservationists.
What do the methods, that look for hotspots areas, try to ensure?	They are used to find areas that in sum total have the highest representation of diversity.
What are two criteria for hotspots?	it must contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants (> 0.5 percent of the world’s total) as endemics, and it has to have lost at least 70 percent of its original habitat.
What do hotspots equate with?	Biodiversity with no. of species
What identifies species extinctions as “unlike other environmental threats”	Their irreversibility
What is the hotspots objective in the terms of Mittermeier et al, 1998?	to achieve maximum impacts with limited resources, we must concentrate heavily on those areas highest in diversity and endemism and most severely threatened”
What is used to identify major tropical wilderness areas?	>75% original vegetation remaining <5 people per km2 This is also used to identify hotspots along with the two criteria's.
Where do hotspots focus? And what percentage of the worlds endemics do they contain?	Focus on tropical and Mediterranean ecosystems 2% of earth’s land area Contain 45.9% of world’s plant species as endemics
What is the problems with finding hotspots?	Uncompromisingly biological approach: “We believe that biodiversity priority setting exercises must focus first and foremost on biological parameters” Mittermeier et al 1998 Ignores the relative costs of conserving each area (effectively uses area as a proxy for cost) so not necessarily an efficient priority setting exercise (even if maximum species richness is our aim)
Why might it not be so important to save endemics?	Many endemics are close relatives of other species Endemics, by definition, have small ranges – therefore minimal ecological importance?
What are the principle's of WWF Global 200?	A “representation approach”: “Most conservation biologists recognize that… we should ensure that all ecosystem and habitat types are represented” “[The global 200] integrates the goal of maintaining species diversity—the traditional focus of biodiversity conservation—with another level of conservation action, the preservation of distinct ecosystems and ecological processes”
How much of the world's species are found in the tropics?	Half
What are the 8 biogeographic realms?	Nearctic, Neotropic, Afrotropic, Oceanic, Palearctic, Antarctix, Indo-malay, Australasian.
Name the 14 biomes?	Image: Biomes (image/png)
What is a Ecoregion? What do they contain?	contain fewer species (per unit area) cover greater surface area contain greater diversity of habitats touch on most countries extend to higher latitudes embody belief that all species are not equal, and that habitats matter as well as species

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Lecture 2 Conservation

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