Sunday 10 January 2016

Experienced Ecology Interview Questions and Answers

31. What is the main means by which autotrophic beings obtain energy?
The main means by which autotrophs obtain energy is photosynthesis. (There are also chemosynthetic autotrophs.)
Image Diversity: photosynthesis

32. Which is the autotrophic group responsible for the production of most part of the molecular oxygen of earth?
Algae and cyanobacteria of the phytoplankton are the organisms that contribute most for the production of molecular oxygen.
Image Diversity: phytoplankton

33. In the ecological study of food interactions how are the autotrophic beings called?
In Ecology, autotrophic beings are called producers because they synthesize the organic material consumed by the other living beings of an ecosystem.
An ecosystem cannot exist without producers.

34. How are the heterotrophic beings divided in the ecological study of food interactions?
Heterotrophs are divided into consumers and decomposers. An ecosystem can exist without consumers but it cannot be sustained without decomposers. Without the decomposers, the organic material would accumulate causing environmental degradation and later death of the living beings.

35. What is a food chain?
Food chain is the linear not branched sequence in which a living being serves as food for the other, from the producers until the decomposers.
Image Diversity: food chain

36. How is energy transferred along a food chain?
The energy flux along a food chain is always unidirectional, from the producers to the decomposers.

37. What are tropic levels? How many tropic levels can a food chain have?
Tropic levels correspond to positions on a food chain. Therefore, producers always belong to the first tropic level and decomposers to the last tropic level, consumers that eat directly the producers belong to the second tropic level and so on.
There is no limit regarding the number of tropic levels on a chain, since many orders of consumers can exist.

38. What are primary consumers? Can food chain present quaternary consumers without having secondary or tertiary consumers? Can a tertiary consumer of one chain be a primary or secondary consumer of another chain?
Primary consumers are living beings that eat autotrophic beings, i.e., they eat the producers. Primary consumers always belong to the second tropic level of a chain.
A food chain cannot have consumers of superior orders without having the consumer of the inferior orders. A consumer however can participate in several different chains not always belonging to the same consumer order in each of them.

39. What is the difference between the concepts of food chain and food web?
The chain concept is a theoretical model to study the energy flux in ecosystems. Actually, in an ecosystem the organisms are part of several interconnected food chains, forming a food web. Therefore, the chain is a theoretical linear sequence and the web is a more realistic representation of nature in which the food chains interconnect forming a web.
Image Diversity: food web

40. What are the three main types of tropic pyramids studied in Ecology?
The three types of tropic pyramids studied in Ecology are the numeric pyramid, the biomass pyramid, and the energy pyramid.
Generally, the variable dimension of the pyramid is the width and the height is always the same for each represented strata of living beings. The width therefore represents the number of individuals, or the total mass of these individuals or the available energy in each tropic level.
Image Diversity: tropic pyramids

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