Biodiversity and Conservation
Quiz 3.3 and 3.4
3.3 Threats to Biodiversity
1. What is a conservative estimate for the number of species on Earth?
2. Where are most of the species found, and what type are they?
3. Why is your answer to number 2 a problem?
4. How many species have actually been identified?
5. What group has the most identified species?
6. What is the book’s estimate of our current extinction rate?
7. How does the size of a food web affect its resiliency?
8. Which stages of succession are most vulnerable and why?
9. What is the difference between a natural disaster and an environmental disaster?
10. Give an example of how loss of habitat has reduced biodiversity.
11. What is the difference between habitat loss and habitat fragmentation?
12. What are some examples of ways that overexploitation has affected biodiversity in the
past?
13. Humans have been introducing nonnative species for a long time. Give a few examples
of when it was helpful, and a few examples of when things went wrong.
14. How can disease threaten biodiversity?
15. How does modern agriculture affect biodiversity?
16. What are the current threats to our rain forests?
17. Be able to list and describe 11 factors that make a species prone to extinction.
18. Explain the concept behind the IUCN’s red list.
19. What are the 9 criteria that it recognizes?
3.4 Conservation and Biodiversity
1. Conserving biodiversity includes direct and indirect values. What are the two categories
of direct values and name some examples.
2. Indirect values of biodiversity include environmental services. Give at least 4 examples
of these services.
3. You book gives 10 other examples of indirect values of biodiversity. Summarize each.
4. What is the difference between conservation and preservation?
5. What is “sustainable development”?
6. Describe IGOs
7. Describe GOs
8. Describe NGOs
9. Describe the world conservation strategy.
10. Explain what came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
11. Briefly describe the “Millennium Development Goals”.
12. Briefly describe the five examples your book gives of “species based” conservation.
13. What are some of the criteria to be considered when designing protected areas?
14. Specifically explain ecotones, corridors, buffer zone and core.