Energy Money Peak Oil Land Food Water Sewage Space Travel Spring 2015 electronic CIS course-instructor survey period begins Monday, April 27th, and runs.

Energy Money Peak Oil Land Food Water SewageSpace Travel

Spring 2015 electronic CIS course-instructor survey period begins Monday, April 27th, and runs until May 8th

Third Exam Thursday 7 May 2015Chapters 11-15, 17-18 plus 8 readings

11-1230 AM Final Exam15 May 2015, 2-5 PMWelch 2.246

1230-2 PM Final Exam18 May 2015, 9-12 AMWelch 2.308

Community and Ecosystem Ecology

Macrodescriptors = Aggregate Variables

Compartment models, trophic structure, food webs,

connectance, rates of energy fixation and flow,

biogeochemical cycles, ecological energetics,

ecological efficiency, trophic continuum, guild structure,

ecological pyramids, successional stages, transition

matrix, regional, local. and point diversity,

saturation with species, species diversity, equitability,

relative importance curves, latitudinal gradients in diversity,

Latitudinal gradients in diversity Time theories, degree of saturation with species

Climatic stability and climatic predictability, niche breadth

Spatial heterogeneity, range of available resources

Productivity and stability of productivity

Competition —> specialization, narrow niches, higher diversity

Disturbance, intermediate disturbance hypothesis, niche overlap

Predation-induced diversity (Paine’s Pisaster experiment)

Latitudinal gradients in species diversityTropical tree species diversitySeeding ringsNutrient mosaicCircular networksDisturbance (epiphyte loads)Sea otters as keystone species, alternative stable statesTypes of stabilityConstancy = variabilityInertia = resistanceElasticity = resilience (Lyapunov stability)Amplitude (domain of attraction)Cyclic stability (neutral stability, limit cycles, strange attractors)Trajectory stability (succession)Traditional ecological wisdom: diversity begats stability

Seed Predation Hypothesis

Nutrient Mosaic Hypothesis

Circular Networks Hypothesis

Disturbance Hypothesis

(Epiphyte Load Hypothesis)

Tree Species Diversity in Tropical Rain Forests

Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)

Amchitka ShemyaSea Otters 20-30 km2 only vagrantsKelp dense mats heavily grazedSea Urchins 8/m2, 2-34mm 78/m2, 2-86mmChitons 1/m2 38/m2

Barnacles 5/m2 1215/m2

Mussels 4/m2 722/m2

Greenling abundant scarce or absentHarbor Seals 8/km l.5-2/kmBald Eagles abundant scarce or absent

Community Stability

Traditional Ecological Wisdom

Diversity begats stability (Charles Elton)

More complex ecosystems with more

species have more checks and balances

Alternative stable stateshttp://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/alternative-stable-states-78274277

Types of Stability

Point Attractors <——> Repellers

Domains of Attraction, Multiple Stable States

Local Stability <——> Global Stability

Types of Stability

1. Persistence

2. Constancy = variability

3. Resistance = inertia

4. Resilience = elasticity (rate of return, Lyapunov stability)

5. Amplitude stability (Domain of attraction)

6. Cyclic stability, neutral stability, limit cycles, strange attractors

7. Trajectory stability

= Variability = Resistance

= Resilience (Domain of attraction)

Limit Cycle Trajectory Stability

Edward Lorenz

Strange Attractor

“Butterfly Effect”

dx/dt = a(y - x)

dy/dt = bx - y - xz

dz/dt = yz – cz

Traditional Ecological Wisdom:Diversity begats Stability

MacArthur’s idea

Stability of an ecosystem should increase with both the number of different trophic links between species and with the equitability of energy flow up various food chains

Robert MacArthur

Robert May challenged conventional ecological thinking and asserted that complex ecological systems were likely to be less stable than simpler systems

May analyzed sets of randomly assembled Model Ecosystems. Jacobian matrices wereAssembled as follows: diagonal elements were defined as – 1. All other interaction terms were equally likely to be + or – (chosen from a uniform random distribution ranging from +1 to –1). Thus 25% of interactions were mutualisms, 25% were direct interspecific competitors and 50% were prey-predator or parasite-host interactions. Not known for any real ecological system!

May varied three aspects of community complexity:

1.Number of species (dimensionality of the Jacobian matrix)

2. Average absolute magnitude of elements (interaction strength)

3.Proportion of elements that were non-zero (connectedness)

May’s challenge using random model systems

Real systems not constructed randomly

Real communities are far from random in construction, but must obey various constraints.Can be no more than 5-7 trophic levels, food chain loops are disallowed, must be at least one producer in every ecosystem, etc.

Astronomically large numbers of random systems : for only 40 species, there are 10764 possible networksof which only about 10500 are biologically reasonable — realistic systems are so sparse that random sampling is unlikely to find them. For just a 20 species network, if one million hypothetical networks were generated on a computer every second for ten years, among the resulting 31.513 random systems produced, there is a 95% expectation of never encountering even one realistic ecological system!

Conservation Biology is a “crisis discipline”

Physiology—> Surgery; Political Science —> War

Conservation Biology bridges the gap between naturalsciences and social sciences. It is applied ethical biology.

Conservation Biology

Recognition and management

of endangered species

Design of nature reserves

Restoration ecology

Ecosystem conservation

Ecological economics

Environmental ethics

“Wildlife Management” is a sad joke —>

We humans cannot even manage our

own populations

Conservation Biology

Value of Biodiversity

Hot spots of diversity

SLOSS debate, Design of Nature Reserves

Minimum viable population size

Genetic bottleneck

Population viability analysis

Sensitivity analyses of Leslie matrices

“Extinction vortex”

Habitat loss, habitat fragmentation,

small population size,

genetic and demographic stochasticity,

toxic pollution and climatic changes

Norman Myers“40% of Earth’sspecies could besaved by protecting1.4% of its surface”

No facts, only interpretations: “Sunrise” = Spinup = SpindawnSelective thinking, use classical Darwinian natural selectionAvoid homicidal males, ages 15 to 40-ishDon’t trust politicians (self deceit, better liars)Don’t trust anybody, not even your mate (cuckoldry, promiscuity)Wash your hands and keep them away from your face!Remember how to get into and out of a public toiletHost-altered behavior: STDs —> increased sexual activity?Eat green and brown bugs and caterpillars, not red or yellow onesSoak acorns before eating, save tannin water for tanning hidesRemember you can make soap by boiling animal fat and ashesChew on willow for pain relief (salicyclic acid)Don’t stand still around a big monitor lizard — if one starts to run upyour back, don’t reach around to get it off, just lay down on your bellyKnock centipedes off in the direction they are moving

Largest Mustelid: Wolverine, Gulo gulo (= glutton) and Gulo luscus

(one-eyed glutton), common names “skunk-bear” and “carcajou”

Largest Mustelid: Wolverine, Gulo gulo and Gulo luscus, now

extinct over most of its range, fur used for parkas repels ice “rime”

Geographic Range of Wolverines

Gulo guloGulo luscusGulo luscus Gulo gulo

Deliverance

James Dickey

For the Last Wolverine

By James Dickey

FOR THE LAST WOLVERINE

They will soon be down To one,

but he still will be For a little while

still will be stopping The flakes in the air with a look,

Surrounding himself with the silence Of whitening snarls.

Let him eat The last red meal of the condemned

To extinction, tearing the guts from an elk.

James Dickey

Yet that is not enough For me.

I would have him eat The heart, and, from it,

have an idea Stream into his gnawing head

That he no longer has a thing To lose,

and so can walk Out into the open,

in the full Pale of the sub-Arctic sun

Where a single spruce tree is dying

Higher and higher. Let him climb it

With all his meanness and strength.

Lord, we have come to the end Of this kind of vision of heaven,

As the sky breaks open Its fans around him and shimmers

And into its northern gates he rises

Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel

With an elk’s horned heart in his stomach

Looking straight into the eternal Blue, where he hauls his kind.

I would have it all My way: at the top of that tree I place

The New World’s last eagle Hunched in mangy feathers

giving Up on the theory of flight.

Dear God of the wildness of poetry,

let them mate To the death in the rotten branches,

Let the tree sway and burst into flame

And mingle them, crackling with feathers,In crownfire.

Let something come Of it something gigantic legendary

Rise beyond reason over hills Of ice

SCREAMING that it cannot die, That it has come back,

this time On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:

That it will hover, made purely of northern Lights, at dusk

Dear God of the wildness of poetry,

let them mate To the death in the rotten branches,

Let the tree sway and burst into flame

And mingle them, crackling with feathers,In crownfire.

Let something come Of it something gigantic legendary

Rise beyond reason over hills Of ice

SCREAMING that it cannot die, That it has come back,

this time On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:

That it will hover, made purely of northern Lights, at dusk

and fall On men building roads:

will perchOn the moose’s horn like a falcon Riding into battle

into holy war against Screaming railroad crews:

will pull Whole traplines like fibers from the snow

In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.

But, small, filthy, unwinged, You will soon be crouching Alone,

with maybe some dim racial notion Of being the last,

but none of how much Your unnoticed going will mean:

How much the timid poem needs

The mindless explosion of your rage,

The glutton’s internal fire

the elk’s Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,

The pact of the “blind swallowing Thing,” with himself,

to eat The world, and not to be driven off it

Until it is gone, even if it takes Forever.

I take you as you are And make of you what I will,

Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty Non-survivor.

Lord, let me die but not die

Out.

Copyright © 1966 by James Dickey