CLD9017 Ecology: The Science of Environmental Issues

Review Lecture

Hui Tin Yan

Science Unit
tinyanhui@ln.edu.hk
LCH112
L10: Review!
• Describe and apply scientific methods commonly used by
scientists to better understand the environment. This includes a
good understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these
scientific approaches.
• Identify, describe, and apply knowledge about basic ecological
concepts at the individual, population, community, and ecosystem
levels.
• Identify, describe, and apply knowledge about ecological concepts
that underlie environmental issues affecting human societies.
• Communicate effectively about current topics in ecology and
environmental sustainability, both orally, as well as in writing.
• Critically evaluate of news and/or media pieces pertaining to
ecological and/or environmental issues. This includes the ability
and confidence to produce well-reasoned opinions about the
issue, both orally, as well as in writing.
 L10: Review!
• Scientific methods & their strengths and weaknesses of these scientific approaches.
• L2: strength and weakness of different species concepts
• L3: proper procedure of establishing a new species
• L6: strength and weakness of different ecological sampling techniques

• Concepts at the individual, population, community, and ecosystem levels.

• L2: Tree of life: organization of life
• L3: how to call a species using binomial nomenclature
• L4: natural selection and its key ingredients
• L5: the concept of relatedness
• L6: describing populations using distribution, size and dynamics
• L8: interspecific interactions
• L9: explain patterns in the population and community levels based on individual behaviour

• Apply environmental issues affecting human societies.

• L5: natural selection in daily life
• L7: societal correlates of human demographics

• Critically evaluate of information on ecological/environmental issues.

• L4: misconception of evolution
• L5: antibiotic resistance
• L7: causes and consequences of human population growth
• L8: human impacts in interspecific interaction
• L9: explain decisions based on optimality models/game theory
L1: introduction

• The need to study ecology and apply such knowledge in

modern day’s environmental issues
• Core components and brief historical development in
ecology
• The link between organisms and environments
• Applications of tools from various fields

Burrows et al. 2014 Nature – global climate change velocity

Mendoza et al. 2022 Mol Phylogenet Evol – evolution of crabs

Why study ecology?
???

Permian mass extinction event

This is 540 millions years ago!

Geological time
Ecology defined …
• What is ecology?
o Study of the distribution and abundance of organisms, and how they
interact with one another and with their physical environment.

• Characteristics
o Complex and variable
o Strong linkage between organisms and their environments

• Importance of ecological knowledge

o Ability to detect and measure changes in the environment
o Ability to predict the effects of environmental change
o Inform strategies for protecting the environment

Nature.com
L2: species concept

• The three primary species concepts: morphological,

biological and phylogenetic
• Identify traits to be used in phylogenetic species concept
• Construct a phylogenetic tree
• Three domains underlying the Tree of Life: Bacteria,
Archaea, Eukarya
• The absence (bacteria, archaea) and presence of true nucleus
(eukarya)
• Diverse groups of animals within the Animal kingdom
Species concepts

Concept Morphological Biological Phylogenetic

Irreducible groups
Able to breed to give
Definition Similarity in outlook in the phylogenetic
fertile offsprings
tree
What traits to use?
Different species Not all species reproduce
The phylogenetic
Challenges can be highly sexually; hard to observe
tree is dependent
similar in outlook (e.g. fossils)
on the trait

Kinmen National Park

Three similar sand-bubbler crabs …
 Phylogenetic tree - recap

Trait value
Trait 1 Trait 2 Trait 3

Red in trait 1 B

Blue in trait 2
C

More ancient More recent Time

Cryptic species

Playing the “spot the difference” game!

House Beautiful UK
 At the base of the Tree of Life

• All life on earth belong to one of three Domains.

• Where are we on the tree?

Woese (1996) Current Biology

Within the animal kingom

Some are bilaterally symmetric while

some are radially symmetric
International Association of Meiobenthologists
L3: discovering species
• The fundamental importance of naming species properly
• Practices in taxonomy
• Obtaining specimen (field, museum etc)
• Erecting type specimen
• Use of binomial nomenclature
Type specimen

• An individual specimen where the scientific name is

formally associated with (holotype).
• Serve as a “benchmark” for that particular species
• “Neotype” if holotype replaced (e.g. lost or damaged)
• “Lectotype” if no holotype when species described
• Can be full specimen (best), body parts, DNA, drawing, etc.
• Type specimen of Homo sapien?

Andrew Moore
L4: natural selection
• Essential components for natural selection to occur: 1)
variation in traits, 2) heritability and 3) variation in fitness
across different traits
• Currency = fitness
• Types of selection: stabilizing, disruptive and directional
• Natural vs sexual selection
Essential components of natural selection
• Presence of variations in phenotype within a population.
• Phenotype influenced by genetics and the environment
• The variation is heritable.
• Phenotypic variation affects fitness.
• The environment acts as a “filter”

Comeault et al (2014) Current Biology

Sexual selection
• Some traits change an organism’s attractiveness to mates
and hence reproduction to increase fitness.
• Zahavi’s Handicap Principle
• Traits as indicator
• Occasionally, some traits may confer a sexual-selection
advantage but a disadvantage from an environmental-
selection perspective.
• Trade-offs

Ian Muirhead
Consequences of natural selection
• The outcome of natural selection depends on the selection
pressure.
• There are three main types of selection pressure:
o Stabilising
o Directional
o Disruptive

Cornell B (2016) BioNinja

L5: natural selection in daily life
• The concept of selfish gene
• Gene and individuals as the unit of selection, not selecting for the
good of species
• Altruistic behaviour can arise due to close genetic relatedness:
Hamilton’s rule
• Evolutionary arm race – bacteria vs antibiotics
• Variation in human traits across the world
• Human as the selection pressure
• Artificial selection - pet
• Seafood
• Even non-living things e.g. mobile phone
The unit of selection
• Why individuals appear to bear altruistic phenotypes costly
for survival/reproductive success?
• The concept of Kin selection
• “Love thy neighbour as thyself” – only if your neighbour and you
share similar genetic make-ups

Paul Souder

Meerkat
Antibiotic resistance – an evolutionary arm race
• Step 1: Phenotypic variation (What variation).
• Step 2: The variation is heritable
• Horizontal gene transfer in bacteria
• Step 3: Variation affects fitness. What is the selection
pressure here?

ducu59us
 Our selection pressure on seafood

• Fish have been getting smaller over time – “fishing down the
food chain”
• How are the principles of natural selection working to cause
this?
o Phenotypic variation in?
o Are traits heritable?
o What is the selection pressure?

Sadovy & Cheung 2003 Fish & Fisheries

Our selection pressure on non-tangible things
• Meme
• Cultural “gene”
• Variation in memes
• Some memes are better than the other when we share them
• “Good” characteristics pass onto the next generation
• Cultural practices, ideas …

“Meme” nowadays …
L6: population ecology 1
• Describing population
• Distribution - niche
• Size – use of ecological sampling techniques
• Random transects, quadrats
• Capture-mark-recapture
• Temporal dynamics
• Uncontrolled: exponential growth (Malthusian’s model)
• Controlled: logistic growth
• r = per capita growth (birth rate)
• K = carry capacity (max. no. of individual to live in an environment)
Distribution of natural population
• Recall the concept of “niche”
• The “right” combination of environmental factors

© James St.
DM Gate 1980 Biophysical John
Ecology
“Clumped-ness” in distribution

Possible mechanisms?

Clumped

Random
Scale matters!
Uniform
Capture-Mark-Recapture
• Estimate population characteristics based on a portion of
the whole population by capturing and marking target
organisms.
• On the second visit, researchers capture target
organisms and count number of marked and unmarked
individuals.
• Formula:
𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑜𝑛 2𝑛𝑑 𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑡 × 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 1𝑠𝑡 𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑡
𝑃𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑖𝑧𝑒 =
𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑠

N = (n2 * n1)/n3

Cornell B ©(2016)
James BioNinja
St. John
Common methods and their pros and cons
• Common methods:
o Line transects (with or without quadrats)
o Visual surveys (e.g., using binoculars).
o Capture-mark-recapture.
• Methods have different strengths and weaknesses:
o Line transects may not be representative: possible bias in
positioning of transects.
o Visual surveys are not always quantitative. Target organism may
not always be visible. Double-counting is likely.
o Capture-mark-recapture are relatively quantitative but
sometimes cost more time and money to execute effectively.
Population growth models
• dN/dT = population change per unit time

Model Exponential (Malthusian) Logistic

dN/dT rN rN – rN * N/K
The logic behind dN/dT

• The more “occupied” an environment is, the

harder for new addition to join
• Occupancy ~ N/K
• So, rN * (N/K) individuals will be lost
 If rN = 10 … When N = 3

6 rabbits added
4 rabbits will be lost!

When N = 6

3 rabbits added
rN rabbits to be added
7 rabbits will be lost!

When N = 9

K = 9 in this environment
ALL rabbits will be lost!
Density-dependent processes

• Change in population over time depends on the

population size
• Prey & predator populations depend on the
density of each other
L7: population ecology 2
• r-K selection continuum
• Variation in life history strategies
• growth rate, offspring quantity vs quality, age of maturity, lifespan,
juvenile mortality
• Sex ratio in natural populations: often 1:1
• Human population ecology
• Correlation with a region’s economic, cultural and/or religion status
• E.g. number of children per women, children mortality
• Exploding population exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet
Life history strategy apart from fecundity:
lifespan and survivorship
• Survivorship curves represent the probability of an
organism’s survival at any age.
• Three general types:
o Type 1: high survival rate
across most age groups,
before dropping off at older
ages (e.g., humans, many K-
strategists).
o Type 2: constant survival
probability across most age
groups.
o Type 3: low survival
probability as juveniles, but
surviving individuals are
very long lived (e.g., marine
invertebrates, some r-
strategist).
© James St. John
Why is sex-ratio 1:1 in many animal populations?
• Fisher’s principle
• 1:1 sex ratio is an evolutionary stable state

M If you are to reproduce, which offspring would be

F better? Male or female?

Condition 1

If you are to reproduce, which offspring would be

M F
better? Male or female?

Condition 2
When our population exceeds carrying capacity…

Yáñez-Arancibia et al. 2013

Ecological Dimensions for Sustainable Socio Economic Development
L8: community ecology
• Describing community
• Commonness & rarity patterns
• Species richness, diversity and difference between community
• Interaction types based on benefits (+) vs costs (-) to
interacting species
• Predation, parasitism (+,-)
• Competition (-,-)
• Mutualism (+,+)
• Commensalism (+,0) – hard to show
Describing a community

Common species are rare, rare species are common

Verbeck 2011 Nature Education Knowledge

© James St. John
Populations interact with each other within a
community

Species A Benefit (+) Species A Lose (−)

Species B Mutualism, Predation, Parasitism,

Benefit (+) *Commensalism(?) *Commensalism(?)

Species B Predation, Parasitism,

Competition
Lose (−) *Commensalism(?)

© James St. John

Possible outcome of competition: niche
partitioning => species diversity
Symbiosis
• From Greek word to mean “living together”.
• Living together within the same space – sometimes entailing
strong mutualistic relationships
• Example: Corals have a symbiotic relationship with
zooxanthellae (an algae to provide food to the corals)

© James St. John

Bioninja
 Predation & parasitism
• Evolutionary arm race
• Mimicry – mimic warning colours or the environment (camouflage)
• Aggressive mimicry in predator to lure the prey
• Defensive mechanisms in plants (physical + chemical)
• Parasites
• Parasites consume resources/nutrients from other organisms, but do
not generally kill the host
• There are parasites of parasites

© Brittany
© JamesGunther
St. John
Food chain and food web
Food chain and food web

• Identifying trophic interactions and role of each species

• Keystone species – those disproportionally important
L9: behavioural ecology
• Concern about the “why” problem
• The use of optimality model: decision, currency and
constraints
• Currency is often the rate of energy gain
• Patch residence time, prey selection
• Playing against each other
• Evolutionarily stable strategy
• Un-invadable by other mutant strategies
• Can explain competition patterns and even cooperation
Identifying core foraging ground
• Determinants of habitat use patterns
• Where are foraging grounds and how much time animals
spent there?
• Facilitate conservation measures
• Identify critical habitats

Core habitats of
Chinese White Dolphin
in Pearl River Delta

Guo et al. 2022 Front Mar Sci

Identifying prey set
• Prey items are ranked often in terms of the currency used
(e.g. rate of energy intake)
• Profitability defined as energy gained/handling time
• Some prey are more common, some prey are rare (recall
species abundances in Community Ecology lecture)
• Optimality models show that there exist an optimal set of
prey items based on profitability but not on encounter rate
Evolutionarily stable strategy
• An “un-invadable” strategy as analyzed from the pay-
off matrix
 What we have so far …
• Scientific methods & their strengths and weaknesses of these scientific approaches.
• L2: strength and weakness of different species concepts
• L3: proper procedure of establishing a new species
• L6: strength and weakness of different ecological sampling techniques

• Concepts at the individual, population, community, and ecosystem levels.

• L2: Tree of life: organization of life
• L3: how to call a species using binomial nomenclature
• L4: natural selection and its key ingredients
• L5: the concept of relatedness
• L6: describing populations using distribution, size and dynamics
• L8: interspecific interactions
• L9: explain patterns in the population and community levels based on individual behaviour

• Apply environmental issues affecting human societies.

• L5: natural selection in daily life
• L7: societal correlates of human demographics

• Critically evaluate of information on ecological/environmental issues.

• L4: misconception of evolution
• L5: antibiotic resistance
• L7: causes and consequences of human population growth
• L8: human impacts in interspecific interaction
• L9: explain decisions based on optimality models/game theory
Classkick questions so far …
What are the two core elements of ecology?
I. Size and shape of animals and plants
II. Distribution and abundance of organisms
III. Interaction between organisms and the environment
IV. Every life on Earth is unique
A. I & II
B. II & III
C. II & IV
D. III & IV

Correct rate = 93%

Classkick questions so far …
What are the three primary species concepts in ecology and evolution?
I. Specific species concept
II. Biological species concept
III. Model species concept
IV. Phylogenetic species concept
V. Morphological species concept
A. I, II & III
B. II, III & V
C. II, IV & V
D. I, III & V

Correct rate = 92%

Classkick questions so far …
What is a "type" specimen?
A. Specimen that looks the best among all collected specimens
B. Specimen that represents one of the several types of the species
C. Specimen where the scientific name of a species is associated with
D. Specimen that is not identifiable

Correct rate = 63%

Classkick questions so far …
Which of the following statement is true?
A. ALL phenotypic traits are heritable.
B. Traits that confer sexual-selection advantages can be detrimental to species
survival.
C. Natural selection will allow species to adapt to any environment.
D. Natural selection is irreversible.

Correct rate = 58%

Classkick questions so far …
Which of the following are examples of evolution at work?
I. Evolution of antibiotic resistance
II. Evolution of phenotypes for the good of species
III. Diminishing fish size in our ocean
IV. Changes in beak morphology in some Darwin's finches
A. I, II & III
B. I, II, IV
C. II, III, IV
D. I, III, IV

Correct rate = 48%

Classkick questions so far …
Which of the following is NOT true about sampling strategies?
A. Sampling should be representative.
B. Systematic sampling is the most effective.
C. Increasing sampling effort improves the precision of population estimates.
D. We may encounter outliers regardless of sampling strategies adopted.

Correct rate = 79%

Classkick questions so far …
Which of the following correctly describes a K-strategist?
A. Offspring have low mortality rate but take longer time to mature.
B. Offspring have high mortality rate.
C. Producing a large quantity of offspring.
D. Often found in highly unstable environments.

Correct rate = 96%

Classkick questions so far …
When species A is removed from a community, species B’s population size drops
significantly. Occasionally, but not always, species B will also go extinct. Which of
the following are possible interaction types between species A and B?
i. Species B is a predator of Species A
ii. A and B are facultative symbiotes
iii. Species A is a parasitoid that uses B as a host
iv. Species A and B are obligate symbiotes
A. i and ii
B. i and iv
C. ii and iii
D. i and iii

Correct rate = 26%

Classkick questions so far …
Which of the following statements correctly describe the optimal patch residence
time in optimal foraging problem?
A. Optimal residence time is not affected by travel time between patches.
B. Energy gain often show diminishing return with time.
C. The optimal forager should leave at the same time regardless of how energy
gain changes over time within a patch.
D. The optimal forager should leave a patch randomly.

Correct rate = 79%

Mid-term on 13th Oct (10% of your course marks)

• Will be conducted during class

• Consist of multiple-choice and short questions (not
open book!)
• Time allowed = 1 h 10 min, will start at 11:10 am
• Bring along stationery!

• Content: up to population ecology 2 lecture

• Can make use of a dictionary (no access to
internet/lecture notes)
Group list for debate activity!

• So far received 5 groups

• 13 students have not form groups yet