References: http://www.utoronto.ca/forest/termite/Decompiculture/Decompiculture/LECTURE3.htm
Decomposition and Recycling of Wood and Wood Products
FOR 1750
Lecture 3 - Jan 25, 1995
Lignin Decomposition and Production Ecology of Wood
Q. What is needed to understand ecosystems in terms of ecological energetics and production ecology?
A. functional organization largely a matter of 1) energy transfers and storage 2) pathways and magnitude of transfers 3) factors controlling dynamics
Q. What are the terms used for categorizing organisms by source of energy?
A. autotrophs, heterotrophs, primary, secondary, tertiary consumers, e.g. herbivores, browsers, grazers, folivores, graminivores, frugivores, carnivores, top carnivores, scavengers also omnivores, insectivores, dungiphagy,
so we see that it is the ecology of tissue types and the state of the tissue. live and fresh or dead and decayed. Molds and bacteria have a profound effect in changing the functional category of tissue, removing it as food for higher organisms by poisoning it. mycophagy, bacteriophagy where do these fit in, filtrer feeders
Q. How many trophic levels are there?
A. Producer, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Consumers.
Q. It is easy to classify most vertebrates into carnivore, omnivore, herbivore what about invertebrates?, especially terrestrial arthropods? and what about iinsects that are predatory on other insects, are they part of the grazer food chain or detritus food chain,
Q. What percentage of the vertebrate biodiversity belongs to the grazer food chain?
many fresh water fish, most anurans, most lizards, many birds, and most primitive mamamals, monotremes, many marsupial insectivores, and placentals, especially insectivora, and edentates and (ground and aquatic detritus feeding insects Apterygota, Paleoptera, aquatic and ground dwelling detritus feeders, cockroaches, termites, beetles, flies
Q. What are some major groups of insectivores that mainly belong to the grazing food chain. all things that eat Lepidoptera larva (leave insects grass hoppers, lepidoptera and heteroptera, bugs)
Q. What are the two food chains in typical terrestrial systems?
A. Grazer food chains and detritus or decomposer food chains
Q. what are the three types of ecological pyramids?
A. Numbers, biomass, energy flow pyramids
Q. What is it called when you mount the grazer and detritus food chains on same pyramid?
A. no fomral name, lets call it a bi-pyramid
Q. Which side of the bipyramid is larger in forest? Which side is larger in grassland?
detrtius food chain in forest, grazer food chain in grassland
Q. Does this tell you something about the economics of why forests are cleared for pasture and crops?
A. obviously it does. In terms of harvestable high protein production the grazer food chain is inevitable transformation of human influence of the terrestrial environment.
Q. What kind of pyramid is left out?
A. is left out the number of taxa pyramid, call it the biodiversity pyramid.
Q. What would the biodiversity pyramid look like for boreal forest?, deciduous forest, grass land, desert, and tropical rainforest?
Q. How do resources from the grasing food chain become available to the detritus food chains
A. defecation and nonpredation death, extracellular secreations( shell, bone, hair, silk), epidermal sloughing (molting, skin).
Q. Do numbers, biomass and energy flow correlate, what can cause them not to?
A. Different sizes, and rates of metabolism, different rates of digestion efficiency and assimilation, different rates of defecation therefore ultimately the graser food chain is part of the detritus food chain. The graser food chain can be thought of as a rather insignificant relatively recently evolved loops in the more ancient detritus food chains.
The gut systems of grasers and carnivores are actually mini decomper systems
Q. What is it called when you combine biomass and energy flow into one diagram?
A. An energy flow diagram.
Q. Contrast Biomass and Productivity and Gross and Net Productivity, and primary and secondary Prodcutivity.
Biomass = weight per unit area,
Productivity = weight gain per unit time per unit area but also includes the total amount produced whether or not it is still there or has already been lost or eaten
Gross = total
Net = minus respiration
Primary, photosynthetic production, photosynthate
Secodary, animal tissue production
Q. What is crop and standing crop, and yield? terms needed for all forms of resource management.
A. the harvestable portion of the net productivity, e.g. merchantable stem wood standiing crop is equal to crop at time of harvest yield is the crop divided by period of time for crop production usually annual yield yield determines return of investment.
Q. What is the leave area index?
A. ratio of leaf area to ground area.
Q. At what leave area index is maximum photosynthetic efficiency achieved?
A. 4 eg. the ground is covered 4 times by leaf area
