ANSWER 5

The difference between obligate and facultative mutualism is in its nature.

Obligate mutualism is a kind of positive cooperation between two species to such an extent that the
survival of one animal species relies on its communication with different species.
Example:
An example of obligate mutualism is that of a honey bee and plants. Honey bees help in the dispersal of
seeds during their nectar collection. This is how it helps the plants and itself derives food as nectar from
the plants. It cannot survive without the plant since it will be without food.

Facultative mutualism is the positive interaction between two species in which the survival of one
species does not depend upon the other species; it can survive without the other species as well.
Example:
An example of facultative mutualism is the connection between plants and birds. In this birds eat fruits of
plants and furthermore help the plants by dispersing their seeds. However, it does not require the survival of
one species without the other. So both the species are benefited but their reliance on each other is not a
mandate.

ANSWER 6

GENERALIST CONSUMER:

Generalists can consume a wide range of foods and thrive in a variety of environments.

Example: A good example of a generalist species is the raccoon (Procyon lotor). They can live in a variety
of settings, including forests, mountains, and large cities, as they do throughout North America.
Raccoons are omnivores, eating anything from leafy vegetables to spiders, frogs, eggs, and human
garbage. Wildcats and coyotes are other examples of generalist organisms.

SPECIALIST CONSUMER:

Specialists have a more restricted diet and stricter habitat needs.

Example: The koala is an example of a specialist animal (Phascolarctos cinereus). Koalas are herbivorous
marsupials that eat only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree and are native to Australia. As a result, they
can only live in areas where there are eucalyptus trees. Some koalas specialise much more within this
diet, eating only leaves from one or two particular trees.

ANSWER 7

GREEN WORLD HYPOTHESIS

According to the green planet hypothesis, plant life is protected by a combination of predatory
Carnivores and herbivores. These hypotheses were influenced by the amount of food available at the
tropic stage, and they clarified the loss of plants and plant organisms.

- The Green Planet Theory was first suggested by scientists in the United States.

In 1960, Nelson Hairston, Fredrick Smith, and Lawrence Slobodkin were part of a group that included
Nelson Hairston, Fredrick Smith, and Lawrence Slobodkin.

Predators, rather than plant defence, are thought to be responsible for restricting herbivore spread,
which would otherwise result in large-scale degradation and a negative impact on plant life. Herbivores
eat relatively little plant biomass, according to the green world hypothesis, due to the following factors:
Herbivore defences exist in some plants.

ii) Herbivores are only affected by abiotic influences.

iii) herbivores receive less nutrients.

ANSWER 8

Contrasting features:

The Gleasonian model was more multifaceted than the Clementsian. The Gleasonian model is
lesser deterministic than the Clementsian. The Gleasonian model preferred a more basic view of
plant succession. The Gleasonian model gave the individualistic concept for the community while
Clementsian theorized the community operated as a whole. Patch boundaries do not migrate to the
Clementsian model. Multiple species relate to each patch type in the Clementsian model. The more
ordered and predictable model is the Clementsian model. Climax community can vary under
perturbation in the Gleasonian model

Comparisons:

Both models had the same core views on the study of plant succession. Gleasonian model is
gradient-based while Clementsian model is patch-based. Clementsian includes multi-species but
Gleasonian includes single species. Gleasonian model used surface metrics while the Clementsian
model used patch metrics.

ESSAY ANSWERS:

Herbivory can affect a plant's growth form by stopping shoot development and causing it to spread,
as well as affecting shoot-to-root proportions. Individual plant species' survival, production, and
development have an effect on vegetation structure and population dynamics. Tyria jacobaeae has a
significant negative impact on seedling establishment, rosette formation, and flowering. Vertebrate
herbivores, on the other hand, (primarily rabbits) had an indirect positive impact by limiting the
growth of the surrounding vegetation (esp. grasses).

Defenses Against Herbivory:

The secondary metabolites utilized by the plants as an anti predator strategy are the chemical
defenses which contain anti herbivore compounds, quantitative metabolites, and qualitative
metabolites with the possibility to inflict adverse effects on the predatory organisms. The chemical
defences are one of the significant effector that caused the evolutionary success of the plants. The
herbivores are the primary hunters of the plants and the plants release various synthetic substances
to try not to be prey. The secondary metabolites formed in the plant's body including the toxins and
quantitative metabolites are utilized as a defence mechanism by the plants. Various alkaloids are
produced by the plant body to cause pernicious impacts on herbivore life forms.

Defensive mechanism against herbivory:

The chemicals employed by the plant for the defense mechanism comprise various metabolites
including salicylic acid, jasmonic acid, lipids, sulfur, non protein amino acids, terpenoids, phenolics,
and alkaloids.

* Salicylic acid:

The downstream defense responses are processed by the action of salicylic acid. These responses
triggered by salicylic acid are distinguished as pathogen-specific in the plants. Multiple immune
receptors aid the induction of the downstream immune activities in the plants.

* Jasmonic acid:

The chewing insects are principally targeted by the Jasmonic acid-mediated response. The other
organisms influenced by the Jasmoniccaid include the cell-content feeders and the necrotrophic
pathogens. The octadecanoid pathway is initiated by the action of the herbivores in the plant. The
enzyme jasmonic isoleucine conjugate synthase1 is connected with the conjugation of the isoleucine
and the Jasmonic acid and the enzyme also mediates the degeneration of the jasmonatezinc-finger
inflorescence meristem (ZIM) domain repressor proteins.

Lipids:

Various lipids of the plants operate as defense mechanisms. The fatty acid concentration has an
impact on various factors exhibited by the plants including herbivore feeding, heavy metal tolerance,
drought, and salt resistance. The long and short-term regulatory mechanisms are produced in the
fatty acid-mediated plant defense. The insecticidal lipid metabolites called the alkamides are
presented in the plant as the chemical defenses. The degree of inhibition to the thrips are found to
increase throughout the activity of alkamides in the plants. The development of the host resistance
due to the action of alkamides is mainly due to its protective simulations. The volatile chemicals are
released from the plants are found to attract various predatory organisms, which feed on caterpillars.

Sulfur:

The tolerance towards environmental stress is mainly contributed by the sulfur. Numerous sulfated
substances are produced in the plants as defense mechanisms and these compounds include
flavonoids, hormones, phytosulfokines, and glucosinolates. The main sulfate plant defensive
chemicals incorporate the thionins and defensins. The glucosinolates are found to occupy an
antifeedant activity. The elevated levels of glucosinolates during the infection of Bacillus subtilis are
associated with the development of defense against the herbivores. The accumulation of sulfur by
the plants is increased by the effect of rhizobacteria and influences the plant defense.
Alkaloids:

The amino acids give rise to the development of numerous alkaloids associated with the
development of various plant defense mechanisms and the alkaloids include cocaine, morphine,
nicotine, colchicine, quinine, strychnine, and ergolines. Most of these alkaloids operate as feeding
deterrents. the presence of nitrogen in the heterocyclic ring along with the alkaline nature favors the
feeding deterrent nature of the alkaloids. The plant families such as the Amaryllidaceae,
Solanaceae, Liliaceae, and Leguminosae are found to produce alkaloids.

Terpenoids: The terpenoids of the plant are found to operate as toxins, repellents, or volatile
compounds deleterious to the herbivores. The repellent oils such as limonene are created from the
terpenoids and these oils are found to be toxic to the insects.

Phenolics: The herbivores are repelled from the discharge of phenolics, which also attracts the
pollinators. The union of the phenolics and the digestive enzymes will lead to the inactivation of the
respective enzymes.

INTRODUCTION

Ecosystem engineering is a term that had previously only been used in modern settings where
biological interactions could be studied directly. As the preceding chapters show, modern examples
of ecosystem engineering have been identified from a wide range of environments and scales.
However, paleoecologists have only recently become aware of the ecosystem engineering principle
and have started to recognise examples from the fossil record (e.g., Curran and Martin 2003; Gibert
and Netto 2006; Hasiotis 2001; Marenco and Bottjer in press; Nicholson and Bottjer 2004, 2005;
Parras and Casadio 2006).

ECOSYSTEM ENGINEERS:

Ecosystem engineers are organisms that establish, alter, kill, or maintain a habitat in which they live or
visit. These organisms may have a significant effect on a landscape's species richness and heterogeneity.
Ecosystem engineers ensure that the world in which they work is safe and stable. However, since all
organisms contribute to environmental change in some way, the term "ecosystem engineer" is only
used to identify keystone species that play a critical role in sustaining the ecological community and
have an effect on other organisms in the ecosystem.

Ecosystem engineers are divided into two broad categories :

1. Allogenic engineers - Allogenic engineers change the world by mechanically converting living and
nonliving materials from one type to another or a variety of types. Beavers, for example. .

2. Autogenic engineers - By altering themselves, autogenic engineers alter the world in which they
find themselves. Trees, for example

EFFECTS AND IMPACTS OF ENGINEERS IN THE CONTEXT OF ECOSYSTEMS

The ecosystem engineering concept can also be useful in the context of more complex systems,
though of course analysis and prediction become substantially more difficult. The interaction among
different ecosystem engineers is an important issue, and introduces new aspects not explicitly found
in the single-species systems, and in the biotic interactions that have formed the core of much
ecological thinking. Here, especially if several species can and do affect the physical environment in
different ways, new kinds of dynamics and interactions emerge because species are interacting with
each other potentially on the longer timescales and broader spatial scales that are typical of
ecosystem engineers.

EXAMPLE:

As investigated by Oren et al. (2007), one sees that the intricacies initiated by cooperations among
ecosystem engineers can prompt considerably more unpredictable conduct than in the fairly more
straightforward adequately single-speciessituations examined in the initial two parts of this segment.
Here the accentuation is both on dynamic administration, and furthermore on the comprehension of
environment measures. Oren et al. (2007) plainly exhibit that the examination of the environment
elements would be inconceivable without express incorporation of the designing viewpoints.
Dynamic administration of biological frameworks is troublesome in light of the fact that the intricacy
of environmental frameworks makes reactions hard to foresee. Indeed, even in moderately
straightforward frameworks, evacuation or expansion of species can have unexpected results, as
underscored by Klinger (2007).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/ecosystem-engineering

BONUS QUESTION:

The predator-prey equations, developed by Lotka and Volterra in 1925, are a collection of equations that
model the populations of two animals, one of which preys on the other. Let x(t) be the number of
rabbits in a region at time t, and y(t) be the number of foxes in the same region at time t. The number of
rabbits increases proportionally to their population and decreases proportionally to the number of
encounters between rabbits and foxes as time passes. The number of foxes increases proportionally to
the number of rabbit encounters, but the number of foxes decreases proportionally to the number of
foxes. The number of rabbit-fox encounters is thought to be proportional to the product of the two
populations. The autonomous system is the product of these assumptions.

Consider the following autonomous system of equations,

dx/dt = (a -by) x

dy/dt=(-c + dx)y

dx/dt=(a-by)x

=0

To find the values of x and y, simplify the above equation.

Therefore, y=a/b, x=0

dy/dt=(-c+dx)y

=0
Again simplify the above expression to get the value of x and y

Therefore, x=c/d, y=0

Therefore the equilibrium points are at (0,0) or (c/d,a/b)

At (0,0) there are no rabbits and foxes

Thus, the rabbit population will grow exponentially away from (0,0)