You are studying how energy flows in a food web. The data in Table 1 shows the d
ID: 178743 • Letter: Y
Question
You are studying how energy flows in a food web. The data in Table 1 shows the dietary composition of species in your study area (for species A–H). To read the data table, start at a species in column 1, read to the right across that row to find the number of individuals consumed, then read straight up to determine the species that it consumed. For example, species C consumed 15 individuals of species A. Use the data in the table to answer the following questions.
1. Create a new table (this will be Table 2) with three columns; species, species consumed, and classification (by diet). Determine which species were consumed by each species. Then, based this information, classify each species by its diet (e.g., herbivore, etc.). Based purely on the number of species consumed, which species was the most generalist in terms of consumption of other species? How many different species did this generalist consume?
Table 1 Species consumed Total individuals A B C D E F G H consumed 0 A 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 B 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 C 15 20 0 0 0 5 0 0 40 D 2 16 0 0 0 8 0 0 26 E 0 0 10 1 0 0 F 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 H 0 0 0 0 0Explanation / Answer
Species consuming
Species Consumed
total no of species consumed
Classification by diet
A
0
0
herbivore
B
0
0
herbivore
C
A, B, F
3
carnivore
D
A, B, F
3
carnivore
E
C, D, E, G
4
carnivore
F
0
0
herbivore
G
A, C, D, E, F
5
carnivore
H
E, G
2
carnivore
Species A, B and F did not consume other species. Hence we can conclude that they are herbivores.
The most generalist species in the given data can be concluded to be Species G.
Species G consumed five different species although the total number of individuals it consumed was less than C, D, E.
Species consuming
Species Consumed
total no of species consumed
Classification by diet
A
0
0
herbivore
B
0
0
herbivore
C
A, B, F
3
carnivore
D
A, B, F
3
carnivore
E
C, D, E, G
4
carnivore
F
0
0
herbivore
G
A, C, D, E, F
5
carnivore
H
E, G
2
carnivore
Species A, B and F did not consume other species. Hence we can conclude that they are herbivores.
The most generalist species in the given data can be concluded to be Species G.
Species G consumed five different species although the total number of individuals it consumed was less than C, D, E.
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