a) Describe two ways of measuring biodiversity. Explain the relationship between
ID: 102179 • Letter: A
Question
a) Describe two ways of measuring biodiversity. Explain the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem stability. As part of your explanation, discuss how susceptibility to disease in agricultural crops and in isolated tribal human populations provides evidence that supports this idea. (5 points) b) Write a hypothesis about the effects of biodiversity on an ecosystem's reaction to adverse conditions such as drought. (2 points) c) Design an experiment to test your hypothesis from Part B. Describe the overall investigation to be done, the variables to be changed, the variables to be kept constant, the subjects to be used, the control and experimental conditions to be used, the type of data collected, and how the data will be collected. Explain why these data can be used to justify drawing a conclusion about the validity of the hypothesis. (9 points)
Explanation / Answer
1. Two ways to measure biodiversity are: (a) Species Richness: The number or count of different species present in an ecological region. It also includes the measure of heterogenity in population. If the individuals are drawn from different environments, their species richness will be greater that the individuals drawn from similar environments. (b) Simpson Index: It measures the level of concentration of individuals in a region when individuals are classified into types. It measures the probability that th etwo entities taken randomly from a population, represent the same type.
Biodiversity enhances the ecosystem stability because different types of species contribute in their own specific way to maintain stability of ecosystem. Each species has a role in the food chain to play, and other species may be dependent on it for their survival. If there is a large number of different species and if any one species disappear due to any reason, there still may be more species to depend on for proper functioning of the ecosystem. So, more diverse the population, more stable will be the population.
Susceptibility to diseases in agricultural crops and in isolated human tribal populations:
Agricultural crops have higher diversity and are grown on larger area of the country. Everyone depends on them for energy and survival. When they get diseased, there will be shortage of grains. The net supply of that crop in public will be low causing instability in ecosystem. Because large population depends on them. But when disease occurs in atribal isolated population, it wont affect the ecosystem in that much level because the are isolated from main population and no one is dependent on them for survival. So, if they are diseased, they wont affect stability of ecosystem in large amount.
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