Nice ppts keep it up.......

when there is a top-down or bottom up effect, do ecosystems usually balance themselves out afterwards or are those effects actually very detrimental to organisms?

So if a herbivore had no predators its population would increase until it starves, right? Would it go extinct, or would it stabilize at a new, smaller population?

For the Bottom-up effect in a Trophic cascade, is it possible to do an experiment and make one at home? I have seen this on the internet where people create their own ecosystems that start with nothing but some water and plants in a container but I am not sure if you need something else of is this is possible.

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

You can create a self contained ecosystem, but it is challenging. In order to support consumers, you need to have a lot of primary productivity. I had a self contained ecosystem once. It had algae and 2 herbivorous shrimp. But the shrimp didn't breed and eventually they died of old age.

Do herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores use different amounts of energy in the trophies pyramid?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, carnivores require more primary productivity because 90% of energy is lost between each level of the tropic pyramid.

Speaking of eating lower on the food chain, is there any impact to humans by doing so? Would we get more or less energy? Equal?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

We would require the same amount of energy to stay alive, but to make that energy that we need less primary productivity and therefore less energy would be required because less is lost between trophic levels.

Would the primary source of energy in a deep sea vent ecosystem be the hydrothermal vents instead of the sun?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

Yes!

In deep waters, is the source of all energy determined by the thermal vents in the ocean?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

In the deep sea there is no light penetration, so no photosynthesis can occur. One source of organic compounds in deep sea environments is chemoautotrophs that use energy from deep sea vents to make organic compounds. The other possible source of organic compound is dead organisms that sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Do carnivores consume more energy than herbivores? Also what source provides the most energy from being eaten?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

Depends on the carnivore. For example, an alligator is a carnivore, but it is ectotherm so it uses less energy than a cow that is an endotherm but an herbivore. So it is more the metabolism that matters rather than the food source. In terms of what type of food, fats provide the most energy per gram, and sometimes animal food can be high in fat, but some plant foods, like seeds, are also high in fat, so it depends.

So all animals use different levels or energy for various activities. Would this mess with the Food chain at all in terms of This animal needs more energy so it consumes more so all together there are less of the prey for the predators to consume?

@brookeklos6951

4 жыл бұрын

The food chain is made in a way to avoid this. There are much fewer animals at the top and many at the bottom. So there are lots of plants, fewer herbivores, fewer carnivores and so on. This also ties in to the environmental limits to population growth, and the carrying capacity of a habitat that we talked about in the past lecture. Hope this helps! (:

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

Yes, if there is one consumer that uses a larger share of energy then that would result in competition with other organisms that use that resource like we talked about in the community ecology lecture.

How does the flow of energy on land differ from the flow of energy in the ocean?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

It's basically the same except that the base of the food chain on land is plants and in the ocean it is algae.

Which ecosystems are sensitive to drought?

@dr.clairesays5104

4 жыл бұрын

Pretty much any ecosystem can be sensitive to drought if it gets much less rainfall than usual.