1. A researcher is exploring a tropical rainforest that is destined to be clear
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Question
1. A researcher is exploring a tropical rainforest that is destined to be clear cut and turned into a palm oil plantation, six months in the future. She encounters many species that are new to science.
a) Which species concept would be most expedient and effective, in the process of collecting, naming, and describing what she finds?
b) Go online and research. Give at least three examples of actual species that are new to science, that were discovered in tropical rainforests, within the last few years. Why don’t northern temperate forests yield as many new species, nowadays?
c) Why is palm oil a subject of concern for conservationists? In a few complete sentences, explain.
2. A researcher is studying the mating calls of a widespread species of cricket. He discovers that male crickets collected from different locations give different calls. Furthermore, females collected from different locations exhibit different responses to the calls, preferring the calls of males from the location they were collected from. The crickets are otherwise identical. In lab experiments, he demonstrates that females will not mate with males that have a call not typical of the location they were collected from, but if tricked, by playing calls of the appropriate male while another type of male is present, they will in fact mate, and these matings produce fertile offspring.
a) Are these crickets a single species, or a species complex? Is there an isolation mechanism? Explain?
b) Go online and research. Give at least two examples of species complexes composed of morphologically similar microspecies or cryptic species.
3. A population of humans, isolated for centuries on an island in the Indian Ocean, exhibits the following phenotypes for pigmentation.
9,999 pigmented
1 albino
This form of albinism is caused by being homozygous recessive at a single locus.
a) Assuming the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, calculate the expected frequency of normal and albino alleles. How many individuals would you expect to be heterozygous?
b) Go online and research. List three historically isolated populations of humans with unusually high frequencies of a phenotype which is uncommon elsewhere. Explain why this might be the case, for each example.
4. Normal alleles mutate to recessive alleles coding for a lethal, hereditary illness, at a rate of 10-8. What would be the expected equilibrium frequency of the recessive allele in a population, assuming mutation selection balance?
5. Green swordtails are sexually dimorphic: males have a long, swordlike projection from their tails, and females have rounded tails.
An experimenter decides to perform a female choice experiment. He isolates unmated females with a choice of two mails, each from one of four groups of males.
1) Unmodified control males
2) A second group of males with tails cut off, and re-glued.
3) Males with shortened tails.
4) Males with lengthened tails.
Imagine the researcher got the following data.
Chosen by female # vs group, for each trial. Trials were replicated 20 times
Trial Who the Female Chose
Group 1 vs. Group 2 Group 1- 10 Group 2- 10
Group 1 vs. Group 3 Group 1- 18 Group 3- 2
Group 1 vs. Group 4 Group 1- 6 Group 4- 14
Group 2 vs. Group 3 Group 2- 16 Group 3- 4
Group 2 vs. Group 4 Group 2- 6 Group 4- 14
Group 3 vs. Group 4 Group 3- 0 Group 4- 20
What might this data indicate, in terms of sexual selection?
Why might this be the case?
Go online and research. List three studies of sexual selection, the organism, and their conclusions.
Explanation / Answer
1) a) Which species concept would be most expedient and effective, in the process of collecting, naming, and describing what she finds?
The earth is having around 10 to 20 million species, and currently we know only 1.9 million species, so the process of discovering species will an ongoing process. The identification of new species is important for conservation organization.
Species concept is a science which helps us to identify a species. Different types of species concepts are in use, 1)Biological Species Concept (BSC),(2)Phylogenetic species concept, (3)Evolutionary species(4) Morphological species concept,(5)Cladistics species concept
One of the effective method used in the process of identification new species is Morphological species concept. It is also known as morphospecies and is used to identify new species based on overall similarity. Here anatomical characteristics are used for classification and the main advantage of this method is morphology can be readily observed without handling or harming the organisms.
Tropical rain forests are damp, evergreen (known to get annual rainfall of over 2000 millimeters or nearly 80 inches)
b) Go online and research. Give at least three examples of actual species that are new to science, that were discovered in tropical rainforests, within the last few years. Why don’t northern temperate forests yield as many new species, nowadays?
The new species which were found recently are
The cocoa frog- one of six new frog species that were recently found in a rainforest-dominated mountainous region of southeastern Suriname
Head-and-taillight tetra- is a collection of new animals includes 11 species of fish that are probably new to science.
False coral snake- these are different from genuine coral snakes, which are highly venomous, but this false coral snakes are not poisonous.
Rain forest have high diversity and specialized habitats. A highly varied kinds of habitats available in tropical areas based on altitude, rainfall, seasonality, soil type, swampiness etc. and this has given a way for the evolution of a myriad of plants and animals suitable to that environment. In addition to this the rainforest have a number of layers, or strata which will provide a great diversity in habitat.
The temperate forests, where the warmer and frigid climate will not give rise to new species. Most of the temperate forests do not have relatively uniform climatic condition and physical conditions over great areas in the tropics. These environments give more stress to the organisms. Temperate forests cannot provide constant food supply throughout the year. The extremes of winter and summer may not allow so many species to thrive. The lack enormous heterogeneity in these forests do not allow the new species to develop.
c) Why is palm oil a subject of concern for conservationists? In a few complete sentences, explain.
Palm oil is a sustainable food crop and a source of biofuel, through which we can cut greenhouse gas emission. Palm oil business is booming and the steadily rising demand for palm oil is making people hard to find more land for this plantation. The CO2 released when this fuel is burnt is roughly the same as that absorbed as the plant grows and Palm oil fuels emitted only 11-17% less greenhouse gas when compared to diesel over their entire life cycle.
Oil palm plantation is responsible for approximately 30% of deforestation happening in the world and palm oil is not renewable fuel. To grow this plants, people are cutting plants, often carbon rich peatlands (which results in tree burning and soil degradation thus releasing global warming gases). The ever increasing plantation of palm oil is producing damaging deforestation and a reduction in biodiversity. As a whole when you will see the use of this palm oil as biofuel is giving only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change.
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