Question 1
Suppose you have a population with 92 male organisms and 32 female organisms. What is the effective population size?
Question 2
Given the effective population size you calculated above, what is the fraction of heterozygosity you would expect to remain after 6 generations?
Question 3
You monitor a population for 5 years and get these population values.What is the effective population size?
Year Population Size
1 112
2 73
3 101
4 88
5 92
Question 4
Briefly explain your favorite example of how climate change’s effect on a particular species is connected to or impacting human health or livelihoods.
Question 5
Describe your favorite example of the ways that climate change alters the phenology of organisms.
Question 6
What is biocontrol? Briefly explain why it might be advantageous in invasive species management and why it might be challenging or hazardous.
Question 7
Do you think that climate change will tend to intensify the effects of invasive species? Why or why not?
Question 8
Briefly describe one challenge that faces conservationists as we introduce, reintroduce, or supplement animal populations, and explain how it can be overcome.
Question 9
Suppose you have a population of rabbits with 4 age classes, and the following initial population fecundities (number offspring per existing rabbit in age class) and probabilities of surviving to the next age class:
Age Class Initial Number Fecundity Probability of Surviving
1 21 0 0.3
2 62 0.8 0.8
3 22 2.1 0.3
4 8 0.4 0
How many rabbits do you predict there will be in the following year
B. Is this population growing or shrinking? How do you know?
Question 10
We discussed three challenges to small populations: environmental stochasticity, demographic stochasticity, and inbreeding depression. Briefly describe how they combine or reinforce each other to set species on a path to extinction.
