Exam 53: Population Ecology

Please read the paragraph below and review Figure 53.2 to answer the following question. Researchers in the Netherlands studied the effects of parental care given in European kestrels over five years. The researchers transferred chicks among nests to produce reduced broods (three or four chicks), normal broods (five or six chicks), and enlarged broods (seven or eight chicks). They then measured the percentage of male and female parent birds that survived the following winter. (Both males and females provide care for chicks.) Figure 53.2: Brood size manipulations in the kestrel: Effects on offspring and parent survival. -Which of the following graphs illustrates the growth over several seasons of a population of snowshoe hares that were introduced to an appropriate habitat also inhabited by predators in northern Canada?

The following questions refer to Figure 53.3, which depicts the age structure of three populations. Figure 53.3 -Which population(s)is (are)in the process of decreasing?

To measure the population of lake trout in a 250-hectare lake, 400 individual trout were netted and marked with a fin clip, then returned to the lake. The next week, the lake was netted again, and out of the 200 lake trout that were caught, 50 had fin clips. Using the capture-recapture estimate, the lake trout population size could be closest to which of the following?

A population of ground squirrels has an annual per capita birth rate of 0.06 and an annual per capita death rate of 0.02. Calculate an estimate of the number of individuals added to (or lost from)a population of 1,000 individuals in one year.

Imagine that you are managing a large game ranch. You know from historical accounts that a species of deer used to live there, but they have been extirpated. You decide to reintroduce them. After doing some research to determine what might be an appropriately sized founding population, you do so. You then watch the population increase for several generations, and graph the number of individuals (vertical axis)against the number of generations (horizontal axis). The graph will likely appear as

Why is territoriality an adaptive behavior for songbirds maintaining populations at or near their carrying capacity?

Your friend comes to you with a problem. It seems his shrimp boats aren't catching nearly as much shrimp as they used to. He can't understand why because he used to catch all the shrimp he could handle. Each year he added a new boat, and for a long time each boat caught tons of shrimp. As he added more boats, there came a time when each boat caught somewhat fewer shrimp, and now, each boat is catching a lot less shrimp. Which of the following topics might help your friend understand the source of his problem?

Which of the following scenarios would provide the most legitimate data on population density?

The three basic variables that make up the life history of an organism are

Which of the following is most key to understanding the demographic transition in human population growth?

Scientific study of the population cycles of the snowshoe hare and its predator, the lynx, has revealed that

In July 2008, the United States had a population of approximately 302,000,000 people. How many Americans were there in July 2009, if the estimated 2008 growth rate was 0.88%?

A population's carrying capacity

Which of the following choices would most likely promote random distribution?

Which of the following is characteristic of K-selected populations?

Which statement best explains survivorship curve B?

An ecological footprint is a construct that is useful

Use the survivorship curves in Figure 53.1 to answer the following questions. Figure 53.1 -Which curve best describes survivorship in a marine crustacean that molts?

The Allee effect is used to describe a population that

Why do populations grow more slowly as they approach their carrying capacity?