Importance of Biodiversity
What are the three categories of Biodiversity?
Genetic Diversity, Species diversity and ecosystem diversity
What are the four ecosystem services?
Cultural, Supporting, Provisioning, Regulating
Is El Nino and La-Nina short, medium or long term changes in environmental variation?
Medium-term as it lasts 3 - 8 years.
The development of roads, towns and factories created barriers between remaining isolated areas of suitable habitat. This is known as...
Habitat Loss and Fragmentation
Is the World Heritage Convention an international, national or state framework?
International
What is an abiotic factor?
Rocks, temperature, soil, air, water etc. anything non-living
What are ecosystem services?
Renewable processes that play a vital role in human survival and quality of life.
What is the edge effect and how does it affect population size estimates?
Whether or not to count species on the edge of a quadrat. It usually overestimates the size of the population.
Human harvesting of food or the use of natural resources from forests, fisheries and wildlife above a sustainable level is known as...
Over-exploitation
Is the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (1999) an International, national or state regulatory framework?
National (Australian Government)
What does endemic mean?
What ecosystem is the following: Air and water quality, ecosystem and climate stability, pollination
Regulating Services
What types of things would you look out for if doing indirect sampling of owls?
Feathers, scats, pellets, decrease in specific food source of bird.
The build up of persistent, non-biodegradable pollutants within an organism when it takes in more of the substance than its body can remove is known as..
Bioaccumulation
What is the purpose of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species if Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)?
To regulate international trade of endangered species.
What is genetic Drift?
Is when the allele frequency in a population is determined by random events rather than by natural selection. It is more easily seen in smaller populations.
What ecosystem service is: Food, fibre, biomass, fuel, medicines
Provisioning Services
What method of sampling mammals would you use for highly motile species such as fish?
Capture-mark-recapture
What four criteria is used to determine whether a species fits into the 'threatened' categories (critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable).
Population size, geographic distribution, number of mature individuals in the population, probability of future extinction in the wild.
What is the difference between translocation and reintroduction?
Translocation is when animals/plants are returned to an area from which they have been eliminated or their numbers are low. Reintroduction is when plants/animals are returned to an area that used to be part of their range but none of that species remains.
What is inbreeding?
Breeding between individuals that are closely related genetically.
If an ecosystem is resilient, what does that mean?
The capacity of an ecosystem to restore its structure and function following natural or human-induced stress.
Aaron is studying the population of the southern brown bandicoot. He has set up a number of quadrats to examine this population. Sakina tells Aaron that you can't use quadrats to study mammal population abundance. Who is correct and why?
Sakina because southern brown bandicoots are highly motile so you would not be able to count them within the quadrats.
Define Biomagnification
The increase in concentration of a pollutant along a food chain through the different trophic levels. This is seen in the use of DDT in pesticides and birds of prey causing eggshells to be thin and reduce the number of hatchlings.
Define the Precautionary Principle:
Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.