2. While conducting research on sunflowers, you discover that an emerging fungal

Question

2. While conducting research on sunflowers, you discover that an emerging fungal pathogen kills them by destroying their roots. The fungus uses honeybees, which pollinate your flowers, as a vector to transmit fungal spores among sunflower plants. The next year the farm reseeds, hoping that the fungus has died over the winter. Early in the growing season some plants begin dying again, but then the honeybee population develops colony collapse disorder and all the honeybees die. To compensate for the loss in pollinators, the farmers introduce large numbers of bumblebees. The number of new sunflower plants that become infected during the remainder of the growing season drops to near zero. Using the variables in the susceptible-infected-resistant (S-I-R) model equation: R0 = (S × I × b) ÷ (I × g), explain what has happened to alter the disease dynamics in the second year of your study and how this has occurred.

A. What type of parasite transfer is occurring between the fungus and the honeybees? The honeybees and the sunflowers?

B. (2) Define (clearly and concisely in a word or two) each of the following variables. What is S? What is b? What happens if b decreases? What is R0? What happens if R0>1?

C. (3) What do you think happened?

Explanation / Answer

Ans-A- the honeybee acts as a vector for the transmission of fungus . The relationship between honeybee and fungus is commenslism and relationship between honeybee and sunflower is mutualism.

Ans-B- there S is suspectible sunflower

B is basic reproduction rate.

If b decreases then the values of all the S,I and R will decrease, most probably the infection rate will decrease very much.

Ans-C- as honeybee and fungus were having commenslism but as the honeybee dies, blumblebees were introduced but they have no commenslism with fungus so the infection rate decreases.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 2
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.