Biodiversity and Humans Lecture 1

Biodiversity and Humans Lecture (1)

• Course title: Biodiversity and Humans
• Lecture number: 1
• Topics include human impact on biodiversity, overpopulation, overexploitation, habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species and climate change.
• Course content focuses on current and future biodiversity dynamics, including predicted impact on humans and ecosystems.
• A core issue of the course is the growing global crises in human health, food, and species extinction, which have often irreversible effects.
• The course is hands-on, applying ecological principles to mitigate human impact on living populations.
• Ecosystem services are a key part of the course, with benefits not always included in traditional markets.
• Ecosystem scales, functioning, interactions, limits and change are also considered.
• The course examines how human decisions impact ecosystem structure and functioning at various scales.

Core Concepts (Disciplinary)

• Definition of biodiversity.
• Ecosystem concept and components.
• Food webs and energy flow.
• Ecosystem change and adaptation.
• Role of specific organisms in ecosystem processes (bioremediation, restoration).
• Ecosystem stability and collapse factors.
• Natural disasters and ecological impacts.
• Impacts of pollution on organisms.
• Extinction events.
• Geographic factors like islands and migration.

Lecture Activities

• Problem-based learning groups: Students choose groups based on their interests related to grand challenges (like congestion, water, garbage).
• Group topics focus on impacts of pollutants, toxins, environmental changes on individuals.
• Topics included in problem groups include: metabolic capacity of individuals, variations in individuals, food webs, cycles, competition, predation, mutualism, ecological resilience, invasion, biogeography, islands, migration, localized extinction, and climate change.
• Driving conceptual questions: Examples include: Are humans the only species that destroy? Can humans fix the environment? Do ecosystems always recover?

Activities

• Activity 1: Differentiating among biodiversity, classification, and evolution (20 minutes).
• Activity 2: Differentiating among biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere (15 minutes).

Levels of Ecological Organization

• Individual: A single living organism with unique traits.
• Population: Group of individuals of the same species.
• Community: Group of various species interacting in a location.
• Ecosystem: An interacting community and non-living environment.
• Biosphere: Regions of Earth with living organisms.

Structural and Functional Components of Ecosystems

• Ecosystem components have abiotic (non-living) and biotic (living) parts.
• Abiotic includes climatic factors, edaphic factors (soil, pH, minerals), and topography.
• Biotic components include producers (autotrophs), consumers, and decomposers (saprotrophs).

Food Chains, Food Webs & Trophic Levels

• Food webs are complex networks of interactions between organisms.
• Trophic levels represent feeding relationships (producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, etc.).
• Energy flow and transfers in ecosystems are important, with a significant loss of energy at each level.

Trophic Levels and Energy Transfer

• Energy flows through organisms in food chains and trophic levels, greatly decreasing with each step.
• The vast majority of energy is lost as heat to the environment.

This quiz explores the first lecture of the Biodiversity and Humans course, focusing on the significant human impacts on biodiversity. Topics include overpopulation, habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change, as well as their consequences on ecosystems and human health. Engage with core concepts like ecosystem services and how human decisions shape biodiversity dynamics.