Exam 56: Conservation Biology and Global Change

A land developer and several ecologists are discussing how a parcel of private land should be developed with housing while saving 20 hectares as natural habitat. The land developer suggests that the 20 hectares be divided into 20 separate 1-hectare areas, spread out across the area. The ecologists suggest that it would be better to have one intact parcel of 20 hectares on one side of the larger area. What is the significance of these different arrangements of the 20 hectares?

Overharvesting encourages extinction and is most likely to affect ________.

Use the following figure to answer the question. Looking at the figure showing the results of forest fragmentation, what can be said about edge effects?

Which of the following strategies would most rapidly increase the genetic diversity of a population in an extinction vortex?

Use the following figure to answer the question. Examine the figure, which notes the average barrels of oil used per person per year in different countries. What can be concluded?

The main goal of sustainable development is to ________.

Which of the following terms includes all of the others?

The primary difference between the small-population approach and the declining-population approach to biodiversity recovery is that ________.

What strategy was used to rescue Illinois prairie chickens from a recent extinction vortex?

Which of the following is a generally accurate statement about the current research regarding forest fragmentation?

Use the following figure to answer the question. According to the figure, which two consecutive years had the largest change in the population growth rate?

Use the following figure to answer the question. Based on the species-area plot in the figure, if habitable area on an island were reduced from 10,000 square kilometers (km²) to 1,000 km², roughly what percentage of the species would disappear?

Establishing new nature reserves in biodiversity hot spots may not necessarily the best choice because ________.

Philippe Bouchet and colleagues conducted a massive survey of marine molluscs on the west coast of New Caledonia. For 20% of the total species that were located and identified, only a single specimen was found. What does that suggest about the diversity of molluscs in this area?

The main cause of the increase in the amount of CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere over the past 150 years is

Brown-headed cowbirds utilize fragmented forests effectively by ________.

What is the single greatest threat to biodiversity?

Use the following figure to answer the question. In looking at the species-area plot in the figure, what can be concluded?

The human impact that scientists determined has caused the most extinctions on record is ________, and beyond further losses from this impact, the other impact with the largest potential to cause future extinctions is ________.

Of the following ecosystem types, which have been impacted the most by humans?