1. Energy Money Peak Oil Land Food Water Sewage Space Travel Spring 2015 electronic CIS course-instructor survey period begins Monday, April 27th, and runs until May 8th Third Exam Thursday 7 May 2015 Chapters 11-15, 17-18 plus 8 readings 11-1230 AM Final Exam 15 May 2015, 2-5 PM Welch 2.246 1230-2 PM Final Exam 18 May 2015, 9-12 AM Welch 2.308

2. 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,

3. 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)

4. Latitudinal gradients in species diversity Tropical tree species diversity Seeding rings Nutrient mosaic Circular networks Disturbance (epiphyte loads) Sea otters as keystone species, alternative stable states Types of stability Constancy = variability Inertia = resistance Elasticity = resilience (Lyapunov stability) Amplitude (domain of attraction) Cyclic stability (neutral stability, limit cycles, strange attractors) Trajectory stability (succession) Traditional ecological wisdom: diversity begats stability

6. Seed Predation Hypothesis Nutrient Mosaic Hypothesis Circular Networks Hypothesis Disturbance Hypothesis (Epiphyte Load Hypothesis) Tree Species Diversity in Tropical Rain Forests

11. Sea Otter (Enhydra lutris)

13. AmchitkaShemya Sea Otters 20-30 km 2 only vagrants Kelp dense matsheavily grazed Sea Urchins 8/m 2, 2-34mm78/m 2, 2-86mm Chitons 1/m 2 38/m 2 Barnacles 5/m 2 1215/m 2 Mussels 4/m 2 722/m 2 Greenling abundantscarce or absent Harbor Seals 8/kml.5-2/km Bald Eagles abundantscarce or absent

15. Community Stability Traditional Ecological Wisdom Diversity begats stability (Charles Elton) More complex ecosystems with more species have more checks and balances Alternative stable states http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/alternative-stable-states-78274277 http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/alternative-stable-states-78274277

16. 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

17. = Variability= Resistance = Resilience(Domain of attraction)

18. Limit Cycle Trajectory Stability

19. Edward Lorenz Strange Attractor “Butterfly Effect” dx/dt = a(y - x) dy/dt = bx - y - xz dz/dt = yz – cz

20. 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

21. Robert MacArthur

22. 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 were Assembled 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!

23. 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

24. 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 10 764 possible networks of which only about 10 500 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 31.5 13 random systems produced, there is a 95% expectation of never encountering even one realistic ecological system!

25. Conservation Biology is a “ crisis discipline ” Physiology—> Surgery; Political Science —> War

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

28. 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

29. 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’s species could be saved by protecting 1.4% of its surface”

31. No facts, only interpretations: “ Sunrise ” = Spinup = Spindawn Selective thinking, use classical Darwinian natural selection Avoid homicidal males, ages 15 to 40-ish Don ’ 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 toilet Host-altered behavior: STDs —> increased sexual activity? Eat green and brown bugs and caterpillars, not red or yellow ones Soak acorns before eating, save tannin water for tanning hides Remember you can make soap by boiling animal fat and ashes Chew on willow for pain relief (salicyclic acid) Don ’ t stand still around a big monitor lizard — if one starts to run up your back, don ’ t reach around to get it off, just lay down on your belly Knock centipedes off in the direction they are moving

32. Largest Mustelid: Wolverine, Gulo gulo (= glutton) and Gulo luscus (one-eyed glutton), common names “ skunk-bear ” and “ carcajou ”

33. Largest Mustelid: Wolverine, Gulo gulo and Gulo luscus, now extinct over most of its range, fur used for parkas repels ice “ rime ”

34. Geographic Range of Wolverines Gulo guloGulo luscus Gulo gulo

35. Deliverance James Dickey

36. For the Last Wolverine By James Dickey

37. 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

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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,

43. 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