BIOS 120 Island Biogeography Lab PDF

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Maha Haroon Bios 120 T.A: Alexis Smith 04/16/21 Island Biogeography Lab Lab data sheet and reading questions For this laboratory, read this paper https://www-cambridge-org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/core/services/aop-cambridgecore/content/view/7EC0365640E63355ECBA8CBCCCC33002/S0376892917000121a.pdf/island_ biogeography_of_insect_conservation_in_urban_green_spaces.pdf Read it through and take a few notes. Next, go to this website http://virtualbiologylab.org/ModelsHTML5/IslandBiogeography/IslandBiogeography.html Familiarize yourself with this simulation and run through a few trials.. 1) From the paper on urban greenspaces and island biogeography of insects, summarize the main conclusions of the paper. Answer in three to five complete sentences. The study in the article said that the equilibrium theory of island biogeography (ETIB) cannot be applied to oceanic islands due to the sheer diversity of factors that needed to be considered. However, ETIB has been showing to give new information on how to understand island biogeography. Future researches should focus in the temporal trends in species and nested analysis.

2) For insects, why would urban areas resemble a string of islands? The urban areas which are composed of buildings are representative to islands. Each building can house thousands of insects likened to an island. They also have different ecosystems, such as damp places, dry places, etc., which different kinds of insects will live. The distance between the buildings will determine if they can travel from one building to another like an island chain.

3) Run a simulation of island biogeography. In your first simulation, make both islands maximum size, but place one as close as possible to the mainland and place the other as far as possible from the mainland. Select mammals as your taxon. After letting it run a while, compare the number of species living on the two islands. What happened? Why this occur?

The richness of species in island near to mainland is greater than in island far away from the mainland. Over a period of time, the number of species in the far island completely vanished, however, the near island was still enriched with multiple species. This is because of the difference in the distance from source area mainland making it difficult for species to be introduced at a far area and survive.

Next, place both islands about 100 km from the mainland, but make one as large as possible, make the other as small as possible. Let them run for a while. What happened? Why does this occur?

The larger island experienced a greater number of diverse species and population compared to the smaller island. This can be because the larger islands can support larger populations with higher habitat diversity and larger targets for potential colonist species.

Repeat the above two simulations, but this time, set reptiles as your taxon. Are there any differences?

When comparing the simulations of the mammal’s vs the reptiles there were no difference between the simulations. The average number of species per island, even if we changed the taxon, did not change significantly. The larger the island and the nearer it is to the mainland the more species it can accommodate regardless of the taxon....