Question

Journal entry 5: Choose a species from their site…determine generation time

Reconsider the Finches example. It was found that average beak depth in finches changes considerably over the course of a few years. What if you were an evolutionary biologist sent to do research on a small island off of South America. You’re interested in how a 500% increase in rain has affected the animals there. You have $1 million, and 5 years to complete your study. This particular island is populated by dung beetles (generation time of 1 month), field mice (generation time of 2 months), and free tailed bats (generation time of 1 year). The problem is that your advisor is convinced that that a study on bats would be a much better investment of your time. You, however, are convinced that a study on the local dung beetles would be much more valauble, given your five year window in which to complete this study. For this journal entry, fill out the grid below. Treat each box as a month and show the generations that you would have over a five-year period for each species. Leave an empty box between each generation to signify where reproduction would occur. Show on your map for each species, where variation is introduced into the population and where natural selection would act on those traits.

5A: So, make an argument for why studying dung beetles in this context would be much more productive than studying bats. Include comments that address both the economic and the scientific benefits of studying dung beetles.

Answer 1

Studying beetles much productive than bats because dung beetles are increasingly used as a study of taxon-both as bioindicators of environmental change ,and as amodel system functioning.dung beetles glow in dark to communicate,though they cannot see at night. beetles can be predators,scavengers ,herbivores,decomposers or parasites based on their type ,which gives a wide platform for studying,dung battles act as scavengers.whereas Bats are small animals that are hard fo find.

Economic and estimated benefits of beetle are

1.they easily decompose cattle dung.

2.they increase foraging palatability

3.they prevent populations ,provide important food sourcefor decomposers ,and reduce larvae of economic insect pests