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Siberian Tiger Case:
- The largest cat in the world
- The Russian Far East mountains house the last remaining tigers
- Nearly became extinct due to hunting, poaching and habitat destruction
- International conservation groups saved the species from extinction
- Research, education, zoos, and captive breeding programs
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Define Biodiversity and the 3 levels
- sum total of all organisms in an area
- Genetic Diversity
- Ecosystem Diversity
- Species Diversity
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Species Diversity
the number or variety of species in the world or in a particular region
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Species Richness
the number of species
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Species Evenness or Relative Abundance
extent to which numbers of individuals of different species are equal or skewed
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Genera
related species are grouped together
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Families
groups of genera
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Subspecies
populations of species that occur in different areas and differ slightly from each other
- -Divergence stops short of separating the species
- -Subspecies are denoted with a third part of the scientific
- name
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Genetic Diversity
Encompasses the differences in DNA among individuals within species and populations
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Inbreeding Depression
genetically similar parents mate and produce inferior offspring
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Ecosystem Diversity
- the number and variety of ecosystems
- •Also encompasses differing communities and habitats
- •Rapid vegetation change and varying landscapes within an ecosystem promote higher levels of biodiversity
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Why is it so hard to measure Biodiversity?
-Many remote spots on Earth remain unexplored
-Small organisms are easily overlooked
-Many species look identical until thoroughly examined
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Terry Erwin
found 163 different beetles on one tree
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latitude gradient
species richness increases towards the equator
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Extirpation
the disappearance of a particular population from a given area, but not the entire species globally
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5 mass extinctions:
- Ordovician period
- Devonian period
- Permo-triassic period
- end triassic period
- cretacious-tertiary period
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The Red List
an updated list of species facing high risks of extinctions
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Four major causes of biodiversity loss
- Habitat alteration
- Invasive species
- Pollution
- Overharvesting
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Biodiversity enhances food security
- Turkey’s wheat crops received $50 billion worth of disease resistance from wild wheat
- Wild strains provide disease resistance and have the ability to grow back year after year without being replanted
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Biophilia
connections that humans subconsciously seek with life
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Nature Deficit Disorder
alienation from the natural environment
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Conservation Biology
devoted to understanding the factors that influence the loss, protection, and restoration of biodiversity
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Conservation Geneticists
study genetic attributes of organisms to infer the status of their population
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Minimum Viable Population
how small a population can become before it runs into problems
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Metapopulations
- a network of subpopulations
- Small populations are most vulnerable to extinction and need special attention
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Equilibreum of island biogeography
- explains how species come to be distributed among oceanic islands
- Also applies to “habitat islands” – patches of one habitat type isolated within a “sea” of others
- Explains how the number of species on an island results from an equilibrium between immigration and extirpation
- Predicts an island’s species richness based on the island’s size and distance from the mainland
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Species Richness as a result of island size/distance
- •Fewer species colonize an island far from the mainland
- • Large islands have higher immigration rates
- • Large islands have lower extinction rates
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Captive Breeding
- individuals are bred and raised with the intent of reintroducing them into the wild
- Zoos and botanical gardens
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Umbrella Species
helps protect less-charismatic animals that would not have generated public interest
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Flagship Species
large and charismatic species used as spearheads for biodiversity conservation
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UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1973) (CITES)
protects endangered species by banning international transport of their body parts
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Debt-for nature Swap
a conservation organization pays off a portion of a developing country’s international debt
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Conservation concession
conservation organizations pay nations to conserve, and not sell, resources
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