Project Descriptions

A total of five homework assignments and a single paper are due on the dates indicated in the Course Schedule.

Homework Assignment #3 builds on the previous assignment and the understanding of the interconnections and trophic interactions within an ecosystem. In addition, the two exercises will provide you with insight regarding the unintended effects that humans can have on the ecosystems balance.

Homework Assignment

Tigers: Biodiversity

Go to the Web site titled: The Tiger Talks Back Here you will find questions and answers about tigers that will provide good background information for Exercises A and B below. The Tiger Information Center also provides useful information

Exercise A

The purpose of this exercise is to see how components of an ecosystem interrelate. Go to the Web site titled Activity: Survive!  A Tiger Adventure.

Choose one of the three Indian forests. Click on "hunt".  After you have finished hunting, add up the number of kilograms you ate in the first three months. Did you survive? If not, why not? Keep track of the number of each kind of animal you killed each month.

Choose the remaining forests, one by one, hunt in them, and see if you survived. If not, why not? In each forest, keep track of the number of each kind of animal you killed each month. At the final forest, after you have finished hunting and have added up the kilograms you ate, click on "graph" and then click on "Why is it so hard to survive?" and answer the online questions. They will prepare you for the questions below.

Part A:

Complete the following short-answer type questions and post them to WebTycho in your assignments folder.

  1. How many kilograms must a tiger eat in a year to survive?
  2. How many deer may one tiger kill and still leave enough deer to survive?
  3. Assume that initially there were an equal number of deer, wild pigs, and cows.  Based on the number and type of each animal that you killed after three months, what might you expect to be the long-term consequences for each of these types of animals in each forest?
  4. In each forest, what long-term consequences might the changes in population of the deer, wild pigs, and cows be expected to have on other populations, such as smaller animals, vegetation, and humans? (What do fauan [deer, wild pigs, and cows] eat?)
  5. Will these changes lead to desertification, flora dominance, erosion or fragmentation? (i.e will the forest still be a forest?)
  6. How much land does one Bengal tiger need to survive?
  7. Were you more successful at killing prey in one forest as compared to the other two forests?
  8. Why do you think this is the case?
  9. Did you kill one type of prey more often than the others?
  10. What might your answer tell you about the population distribution or density in each forest of deer, wild pigs, and cows?

Exercise B

The purpose of this exercise is to see what is entailed in ensuring that a species will survive in a global captive management breeding system. Go to the Web site titled: Activity: Save the Tiger!   Then click on "Come to the Save the Tiger Kickoff Meeting".

Read Don Wilson's speech and click on your answer. Go through the program clicking on various answers. If you get fired from your job or choose the wrong mate for Jambi, choose a different answer. Proceed until you can pick up your reward. Once you have completed this exercise, answer the following questions and post them to Webtycho.

Part B:

  1. Why are certain animals bred in zoos?
  2. What variables must be considered when breeding captive animals?
  3. What factors play a role in the viability of captively produced offspring?

   HINT: Burt Reynolds confronted one or more of these factors in the movie "Deliverance".

Exercise C

Read the quote by O. Wilson at the beginning of module 3. Then answer the following short-essay type questions using the critical reasoning that you have gained as an aware environmentalist.

Part C:

Read the quote by O. Wilson at the beginning of module 3. Then restate it in your own words. Answer the following short-essay type questions using the critical reasoning that you have gained as an aware environmentalist.

  1. Why do you think we chose this quote for this particular module?
  2. Restate O.Wilson's quote it in your own words?
  3. How is biodiversity measured?
  4. What concerns does O. Wilson express with this sentence?

Return to top of page