1. More than half of the world\'s species of plants and animals are found in the
ID: 12087 • Letter: 1
Question
1. More than half of the world's species of plants and animals are found in the rainforests. For this reason, we tend to think of them as very fertile areas and they have been called the "jewels of the Earth". Despite the rapid vegetation growth and abundant animal species, the soil is rather poor.Describe why this is so and describe the problems that this may cause. From your knowledge of photosynthesis and cellular respiration, can you explain why this is so?
2. Describe at least two ways in which we could stop cellular respiration.
Explanation / Answer
1) The soil is so poor because of the rapid nutrient recycling. Dead organic matter is broken down so quickly that very little nutrients actually makes it into the soil. Decomposers are everywhere and they get a majority of the nutruents. When a plant dies, it rapidly decomposes and the nutrients from that are quickly taken up by other plants that rapidly replace it. Part of this quick decomposition comes from the mutualism shared by many plants with a special specie of fungus that helps break down and take up nutrients more quickly. By slashing and burning, farmers will get good, nutrient-rich soil for a couple years, but will then have to move on because the soil will be poor again. This is problematic (to farmers at least) because this means they can't grow anything there for very long before the land becomes unusable. This makes things harder because crops will only do well for a few years and then will not grow. And to feed the growing population, they have to cut down more. Many South American countries are trying to make money by herding cattle and other livestock and growing crops for the US and China and have to destroy hundreds of thousands, if not millions of acres every year to do so. Organisms take in the nutrients and these nutrients greatky benefit the organism by giving it nutrients it can use for cellular respiration or photosynthesis. So there is always much competition to gather as much nutrients as possible as fast as possible to help with respiration or photosynthesis. Rainforests are set up that everything happens quickly, so organisms must get energy as quickly as they can or else they will be outcompeted for resources and die. 2) One way you could stop cellular respiration is to introduce a toxin of some sort into the system. There are multiple different toxins that can do many different things to slow down or stop respiration. Another way would be to introduce a chemical that tricks a step of respiration to think it is complete and stop the system. One in particular would be to introduce many enzyme inhibitors to trick the system. It just takes one inhibitor to shut down respiration Hope that helps
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