Interpreting Ecological Data Exercises for Undergraduates

About the author

Preface

How to use this book

Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS)

Principal component analysis (PCA)

Exercise 1.1: Biodiversity and stability

Exercise 1.2: Biodiversity and ecosystem function

Exercise 1.3: Biodiversity and invasibility

Exercise 1.4: Invasibility of plant communities

Exercise 1.5: Colonisation of islands

Exercise 1.6: Testing the Janzen–Connell hypothesis

Exercise 1.7: Herbivores and bird diversity

Exercise 1.8: Changes in species richness in chalk grasslands

Exercise 2.1: Disturbance by an invasive freshwater fish

Exercise 2.2: Fynbos and fire

Exercise 2.3: Seed burial, fire, germination

Exercise 2.4: Disturbance to coral communities (1)

Exercise 2.5: Disturbance to coral communities (2)

Exercise 2.6: Salt marsh succession

Exercise 2.7: Rocky shore succession

Exercise 2.8: Invasive species and grassland succession

Exercise 3.1: Salamanders in streams

Exercise 3.2: Soils over time in Hawaii

Exercise 3.3: Coral spawning and nutrients

Exercise 3.4: Decomposition by woodlice

Exercise 3.5: Home-field advantage for decomposing litter?

Exercise 3.6: Plant litter and termites

Exercise 3.7: Whales and nutrient cycling

Exercise 3.8: Nutrients, mangroves and seabirds

Exercise 4.1: Population cycles in Capitella capitata

Exercise 4.2: Intraspecific competition over time in box tree moths

Exercise 4.3: Limpet density

Exercise 4.4: Trade-offs in life histories

Exercise 4.5: Lack clutch size

Exercise 4.6: Limiting factors in wood pigeons

Exercise 4.7: Pecking order in oystercatchers

Exercise 4.8: Control of noisy miners

Exercise 5.1: Competition between pink muhly grass and native species in South Korea

Exercise 5.2: Interactions between bluebirds

Exercise 5.3: Competition between water fleas

Exercise 5.4: Interactions between forest ants

Exercise 5.5: Coexistence in seabirds

Exercise 5.6: Seasonal changes in coexistence in ducks

Exercise 5.7: Gause, Paramecia and Lotka–Volterra

Exercise 5.8: Interactions between mink and otters

Exercise 6.1: Elephants, ants and scale insects

Exercise 6.2: Grazing by marsh periwinkles

Exercise 6.3: Marsh periwinkles, grazing and parasites

Exercise 6.4: Anemone symbiosis

Exercise 6.5: Invasive crayfish in North America

Exercise 6.6: Yucca and moths

Exercise 6.7: Impact of a parasitic plant on salt marshes

Exercise 6.8: Avian vampire flies and their impact on Galapagos finches

Exercise 7.1: Brown bear diet in Sweden

Exercise 7.2: Population cycles of Arctic ground squirrels

Exercise 7.3: Invasive mongooses in Japan

Exercise 7.4: Skate and mussels in Strangford Lough

Exercise 7.5: Impact of invasive pythons

Exercise 7.6: Predator–prey cycles

Exercise 7.7: Oak masting and weevil predation

Exercise 7.8: Impacts of predation on a tadpole community

Exercise 8.1: Goldenrod, grasshoppers and spiders

Exercise 8.2: Grazing effects of red and roe deer

Exercise 8.3: Lizards, homopterans, midges and shrubs

Exercise 8.4: Kruger food web

Exercise 8.5: Coastal food web

Exercise 8.6: Food webs and decomposition

Exercise 8.7: Metabarcoding to unscramble water birds’ diets

Exercise 8.8: Response of soil food webs to defoliation

Exercise 9.1: Birds on mountains

Exercise 9.2: Parasitic trematodes’ response to increased temperature

Exercise 9.3: Mycorrhizas and interactions

Exercise 9.4: Damselfish interactions

Exercise 9.5: Eider in the Arctic

Exercise 9.6: Warming and drying in tropical forest soils

Exercise 9.7: Arctic food webs

Exercise 9.8: Impact of warming environments on limpets

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Biography

Clare J. Trinder is Emeritus Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, UK. She worked as a research plant ecologist from 2007 to 2011 at the University of Aberdeen in collaboration with the James Hutton Institute, and has practical experience in both national and international nature conservation as an environmental education officer and conservation officer.