Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Colegio de Ciencias Biolgicas y Ambientales

Tropical Rainforest Ecology

1st. Midterm.
Instructions: Choose 10 questions from the list bellow. Each question
is worth 10 points for a total of 100. You must limit your answer to
each question to half a page, so you may not have more than 5
pages total. Upload your exam into D2L. At least one of your
responses has to cite the papers that have been presented in class.
You have to respond in English and I will not pay too much attention
to grammar but I will to spelling. If you submit your exam after the
due date, I will take 5 points from the total for each day you are late.
1. Describe the major attributes of the following ecosystems:
paramo, mangroves, cloudforest. Use a table to describe the
following things for each of them: 1) Altitude range, 2) Climate 3)
General description of the vegetation 4) Examples of plants 5)
Examples of animals 6) Where in Ecuador do you find them.
2. Where in the world can we find Tropical Rainforest and their
major names for them (i.e. Amazon). What is the estimate for the
total area of each and how much of that percentage is critically
endangered.
3. What are the layers of a TRF? Describe each layer. Include in your
explanation lianas and epiphytes.
4. Explain Cauliflory. In your response you must include possible
evolutionary advantages for this strategy.
5. What are buttress and stilt roots, why are they found in TRFs.
6. Describe Varzea, Igapo and Terra firme
7. Explain 2 mechanisms that promote speciation in the Tropics.
Your answer must include inter and intra specific competition.
8. What is the Refugia Theory and why is it important to explain
diversity in the Amazon?
9. How do we sample diversity of trees in a forest? What do we
know if different about TRF trees? And how about lianas?
10. What is a species accumulation table? How many species are
there on Earth? How much do the tropics affect these estimates?
What are the most biodiverse groups of organisms? What are the
least known and the best-known groups?
11. What are Alpha, Beta and Gamma Diversity and what do we
use these concepts for? Explain one of the methods for
measuring diversity.
12. Explain two: Stability hypothesis, Productivity hypothesis,
Interspecific competition hypothesis, predation hypothesis.
13. What do we know about the cycles for Nitrogen and other
nutrients in the rainforest? What kinds of mechanisms operate to
reduce nutrient loss?
14. Are tropical rainforest carbon sources or carbon sinks? What
processes promote the fixation of CO2 and which may produce
losses?
15. Do we have some idea of what would happen to rainforest
with Climate Change? How certain are we of the changes that
may take place? What may be some of the threats to species
diversity? Which species may be more vulnerable?